3alami
world, worldwideThe word, broken down.
عالَمِيّ reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A voiced sound from deep in the throat. Arabizi writes it '3'.
A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.
A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'm'. A small round head with a tail.
A short 'i', written as a small stroke below the letter.
A 'y', or a long 'i' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.
Doubles the letter it sits on; hold the consonant a beat longer.
What does 3alami mean in Arabizi?
3alami is how you write عالَمِيّ in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “world, worldwide”.
The 3 stands for ع (ayn): a throaty sound. No clean English equivalent. 3 is a mirrored ع.
For the rest of the chat alphabet, see the Arabizi → Arabic guide. Got it the other way round, with Arabic script to convert? That is the Arabic to Arabizi converter.
The keystrokes, in order.
On a standard Arabic 101 / Arabic-PC layout — 8 key presses. Diacritics sit on the Shift keys. The on-screen keyboard on this site highlights each key as you go.
Want the keys under your fingers first? The mixed session on our Arabic typing practice page runs through words from every set.
Open the typing practice →- 01U→ع
- 02H→ا
- 03G→ل
- 04Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 05L→م
- 06Shift+A→ـِkasra
- 07D→ي
- 08Shift+`→ـّshadda
Feminine and plural forms.
Arabic words change with gender and number. Here’s the full set for 3alami:
The definition is adapted from the Wiktionary entry, whose contributors publish it under CC BY-SA 4.0. The frequency rank counts how often the word appears in film and TV subtitles (OpenSubtitles, via Hermit Dave’s FrequencyWords). More on the acknowledgements page.