arabictyper
The word
أَصْلاً

aslan

originally, at all, in the first place
Arabicأَصْلاً
Arabiziaslan
Translationoriginally, at all, in the first place
TypeParticle
Audio
MSA audio
Letter by letter

The word, broken down.

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

01
Letter
أ
hamza on alif
ʾa

A glottal stop carried on an alif.

Type:Shift+H
02
Diacritic
ـَ
fatḥa
a

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

Type:Shift+Q
03
Letter
ص
ṣād

An emphatic 's', pronounced with a fuller, deeper mouth.

Type:W
04
Letter
ل
lām
l

A plain 'l'. A tall upright stroke with a curved foot.

Type:G
05
Letter
ا
alif
ā

A long 'a' vowel. A single upright stroke, and the first letter of the alphabet.

Type:H
06
Diacritic
ـً
tanwīn fatḥ
an

Adds an '-an' ending (two slanted strokes above).

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

What does aslan mean in Arabizi?

aslan is how you write أَصْلاً in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “originally, at all, in the first place”. 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.

How to type it

The keystrokes, in order.

On a standard Arabic 101 / Arabic-PC layout — 7 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. 01Shift+Hأ
  2. 02Shift+Qـَfatḥa
  3. 03Wص
  4. 04Shift+Xـْ
  5. 05Gل
  6. 06Hا
  7. 07Shift+Wـًtanwīn fatḥ
Composedأَصْلاً
أَصْلاً
Practice

Type أَصْلاً 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.