maktaba
library, bookstore, stationery storeThe word, broken down.
مَكْتَبة reads right to left. Below, each letter in reading order, with its sound and the keys that type it.
A plain 'm'. A small round head with a tail.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'k'.
A plain 't'. The same body as bāʾ, but with two dots above.
A short 'a', written as a small stroke above the letter.
A plain 'b'. A tooth-shaped body with one dot below.
The 'tied tāʾ'. It marks a feminine ending, sounded as a soft 'a'.
What does maktaba mean in Arabizi?
maktaba is how you write مَكْتَبة in Arabizi, the Arabic chat alphabet. It means “library, bookstore, stationery store”. 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 — 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 →- 01L→م
- 02Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 03;→ك
- 04Shift+X→ـْ
- 05J→ت
- 06Shift+Q→ـَfatḥa
- 07F→ب
- 08M→ة
Feminine and plural forms.
Arabic words change with gender and number. Here’s the full set for maktaba:
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.