arabictyper
The word
حَيّ

7ay

alive, organism, lively
Arabicحَيّ
Arabizi7ay
Translationalive, organism, lively
TypeAdjective
Rootح و ي
Audio
MSA audio
Letter by letter

The word, broken down.

حَيّ reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.

01
Letter
ح
ḥāʾ

A breathy h from deep in the throat, heavier than an English 'h'.

Type:P
02
Diacritic
ـَ
fatḥa
a

A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.

Type:Shift+Q
03
Letter
ي
yāʾ
y / ī

A 'y', or a long 'i' vowel when it carries no vowel of its own.

Type:D
04
Diacritic
ـّ
shadda
double

Doubles the letter it sits on; hold the consonant a beat longer.

Type:Shift+`
← First letter shown leftmost; the actual word is read right-to-left in script.
Arabizi

What does 7ay mean in Arabizi?

7ay is how you write حَيّ in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “alive, organism, lively”.

The number in 7ay
7ح

The 7 stands for ح (ḥa): a breathy h, deeper than English h. 7 bends the way ح bends.

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.

How to type it

The keystrokes, in order.

On a standard Arabic 101 / Arabic-PC layout — 4 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 →
Sequence
  1. 01Pح
  2. 02Shift+Qـَfatḥa
  3. 03Dي
  4. 04Shift+`ـّshadda
Composedحَيّ
The full set

Feminine and plural forms.

Arabic words change with gender and number. Here’s the full set for 7ay:

FormArabicArabiziUse
Masculine · currentحَيّ7aythe base form, for a masculine subject
Feminineحَيَّة7ayyafor a feminine subject
Pluralأَحْياءa7ya'for three or more
حَيّ
Practice

Type حَيّ until your fingers know it.

Or take it to the online Arabic keyboard and type it freely. Sessions run inside our free Arabic typing practice tool.

Start a practice sessionOpen the Arabic keyboard

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.