Arabic Phonetic Keyboard: Type Arabic in English Letters

Arabic Learning Resources > Arabic Phonetic Keyboard

An Arabic phonetic keyboard lets you type Arabic by sound, in English letters. Type salam, press Space, and سلام appears. The keyboard below opens in phonetic mode. It reads the chat digits, such as 7 for ح and 3 for ع, offers up to five Arabic spellings for each word, and needs no download.

How to type Arabic in English letters

Type the word the way it sounds, then pick its Arabic spelling from the list that appears under the text box. The keys work like this:

• Space takes the highlighted spelling and adds a space. Enter takes it and adds nothing.
• A comma, semicolon or question mark takes the spelling and types the Arabic mark: ، ؛ ؟. A full stop, exclamation mark or colon is typed as it is.
• The up and down arrow keys move the highlight through the list.
• Esc hides the list and keeps the Latin letters you typed.
• On a phone, tap the spelling you want.

The digits 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are letters here, so they never pick from the list. A plain number such as 2026 stays a number. The Arabic keys under the text box still type in this mode, which is the quick way to fix one letter of a suggestion. The rest of the box works as it does in layout mode: Copy, the size buttons, and buttons that send your text to Google, Google Translate, YouTube or WhatsApp. What you type stays in your browser until you press one of those four.

The Arabizi chart: what each spelling types

Arabizi is the chat alphabet that writes Arabic in Latin letters and digits, and it is what this keyboard reads. The digits and the two-letter spellings below cover the sounds English letters lack. Every example is typed exactly as shown, and the Arabic beside it is the spelling the keyboard offers. Elsewhere on this page, a transliteration in brackets uses dots and macrons instead of digits (ṣ for ص, ā for a long a), so you can tell it from what you type.

Every other Latin letter types the Arabic letter closest to it:

The letter x types two letters, كس (k and s).

How vowels are written

Arabic writes long vowels as letters and usually leaves short vowels out, so the rules decide by position:

• At the start of a word, any vowel writes a bare ا: ahlan gives اهلاً. Type 2ahlan for the careful spelling أهلاً (ahlan, welcome).
• Inside a word, a, e and u write nothing, while i writes ي and o writes و. So 7elw gives حلو (ḥilw, sweet), and 7ilw gives the misspelling حيلو.
• At the end of a word, a writes ا, i and e write ي, and o and u write و.
• A final -an after a consonant writes the ending اً, so the rules spell shukran as شكراً (shukran, thank you).
• A doubled letter is written once: yalla gives يلا (yalla, come on).

The rules never write vowel marks, ة or ى. A hamza inside a word comes out bare: sa2al gives سءل, where the correct spelling is سأل (saʾala, he asked). Fix those with the keys under the text box, where أ, إ and آ have their own row. The word list below often has the right spelling already.

Why the first suggestion is sometimes the wrong word

The list puts real words first and the rule guess last. The real words come from a list of 1,401 Latin spellings taken from words this site already prints with their transliteration: the flashcard decks, the name lists, the word games, the dialect phrasebook and the meaning pages. That is why salam offers سلام first and the rule guess سلم second, and why inshallah offers إن شاء الله as three words.

To match the many ways people spell one word (habibi, 7abibi, habeebi), the list ignores some differences: q against k, e against i, o against u, 7 against h, 9 against s, doubled letters, and the digits 3 and 2, which it drops. Two different words can then share an entry, and the one listed first is not always the one you meant:

A word missing from the list gets only the rule guess, and the rules can be wrong. Typed as kitab, book comes out as كيتب, because a medial i writes ي. Leave the short vowel out and double the long one (ktaab) and the right spelling appears. Read each word before you press Space.

Spelling notes for French, German, Turkish and Indonesian speakers

The keyboard reads the spelling habits of the page's language. On the French, German, Turkish and Indonesian versions of this page, which the language menu links to, you can spell Arabic the way your own language writes its sounds. The chat digits mean the same in every language, and accents are ignored once these spellings are read. On this English page those spellings are read as English letters, so chokran comes out as كهوكراً.

German j is read as y, the way German pronounces it, so type dsch for the Arabic j sound. Turkish ç becomes تش, a t and an sh, because Arabic has no ch sound.

From phonetic typing to the Arabic layout

What you type here is real Arabic script, so it pastes into a search box, a message or a document like any other Arabic. But the keyboard guesses at spelling from sound, and your fingers learn nothing about where Arabic letters sit. On the standard Arabic keyboard the S key happens to type س, but A types ش and H types ا.

Use phonetic mode to get Arabic on screen today, then switch the same keyboard to Arabic layout with the button above the text box. A table of QWERTY keys and the Arabic letters they type shows the whole layout key by key, and the Arabic 101 keyboard with six typing lessons teaches the layout from the home row to whole sentences. Phonetic mode leaves out the vowel marks, and typing Arabic with harakat shows how to add them. To convert a whole paragraph of Arabizi at once, or to turn Arabic script back into Latin letters, use the Arabizi and transliteration converter, which turns Arabizi into Arabic with the same spelling rules as this keyboard.

Frequently asked questions