Allah in Arabic: الله
GodThe word, broken down.
اللّٰه reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
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 plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.
Doubles the letter it sits on; hold the consonant a beat longer.
A miniature alif standing in for a long 'a'.
A soft 'h', as in the English word 'hat'.
What does allah mean in Arabizi?
allah is how you write اللّٰه in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “God”. No numbers in this one; it spells out in plain Latin letters.
New to the chat alphabet? See how every letter and number maps: 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 — 5 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 →- 01H→ا
- 02G→ل
- 03G→ل
- 04Shift+`→ـّshadda
- 05I→ه
Typing الله on a phone or a PC.
On a phone
Turn on the Arabic keyboard first. It comes with the phone, it's just switched off (iPhone steps, Android steps). Then tap ا, ل, ل, ه: alif, lam twice, ha. Watch that last one. ه is ha. ة, with the two dots on top, is a different letter, and الله doesn't end with it. Lots of fonts redraw the four letters as one joined shape once you finish, so don't worry if it looks different from what you tapped.
On a PC
With the Arabic 101 layout on, press H, G, G, I. ل sits on G, so you hit it twice. Windows has the layout built in: add Arabic under Time & language and switch with Win + Space (Windows steps). On a Mac, pick the input source called Arabic – PC. Plain "Arabic" moves some letters to other keys (Mac steps).
The big الله at the top of this page has a shadda and a small alif over the second lam. People leave both off when they type. Shift + ` adds the shadda if you want it, but there's no key for the small alif on a standard keyboard, and the four plain letters are how almost everyone writes it.
Getting the sounds right.
Two syllables, al-LAAH, and the second one carries the weight. The double l is heavy here, made with the back of the tongue low, close to the l in English "full". It's the one word where standard Arabic uses that dark l. After an i sound it goes light again, so bismillah and lillah sound thinner than allah on its own.
Example sentences.
Sentences using اللّٰه, with diacritics so the rhythm is unambiguous.
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.