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The Arabic chat alphabet, Arabizi, Arabeezi, Arabish, Franco-Arabic or simply Franco (from franco-arabe) refer to the romanized alphabets for informal Arabic dialects in which Arabic script is transcribed or encoded into a combination of Latin script and Arabic numerals. These informal chat alphabets were originally used primarily by youth in the Arab world in very informal settings—especially for communicating over the Internet or for sending messages via cellular phones—though use is not necessarily restricted by age anymore and these chat alphabets have been used in other media such as advertising.

These chat alphabets differ from more formal and academic Arabic transliteration systems, in that they use numerals and multigraphs instead of diacritics for letters such as ṭāʾ (ط) or ḍād (ض) that do not exist in the basic Latin script (ASCII), and in that what is being transcribed is an informal dialect and not Standard Arabic. These Arabic chat alphabets also differ from each other, as each is influenced by the particular phonology of the Arabic dialect being transcribed and the orthography of the dominant European language in the area—typically the language of the former colonists, and typically either French or English.

Because of their widespread use, including in public advertisements by large multinational companies, large players in the online industry like Google and Microsoft have introduced tools that convert text written in Arabish to Arabic (Google Translate and Microsoft Translator). Add-ons for Mozilla Firefox and Chrome also exist (Panlatin and ARABEASY Keyboard ). The Arabic chat alphabet is never used in formal settings and is rarely, if ever, used for long communications.

History

During the last decades of the 20th century, Western text-based communication technologies, such as mobile phone text messaging, the World Wide Web, email, bulletin board systems, IRC, and instant messaging became increasingly prevalent in the Arab world. Most of these technologies originally permitted the use of the Latin script only, and some still lack support for displaying Arabic script. As a result, Arabic-speaking users frequently transliterate Arabic text into Latin script when using these technologies to communicate. To handle those Arabic letters that do not have an approximate phonetic equivalent in the Latin script, numerals and other characters were appropriated known as "code switching". For example, the numeral "3" is used to represent the Arabic letter ⟨ع⟩ (ʿayn)—note the choice of a visually similar character, with the numeral resembling a mirrored version of the Arabic letter. Many users of mobile phones and computers use Arabish even though their system is capable of displaying Arabic script. This may be due to a lack of an appropriate keyboard layout for Arabic, or because users are already more familiar with the QWERTY or AZERTY keyboard layout.

Online communication systems, such as IRC, bulletin board systems, and blogs, are often run on systems or over protocols that do not support code pages or alternate character sets. Thus, the Arabic chat alphabet has become commonplace. It can be seen even in domain names, like Qal3ah.

According to one 2020 paper based on a survey done in and around Nazareth, there is now "a high degree of normativization or standardisation in Arabizi orthography."

Comparison table

Because of the informal nature of this system, there is no single "correct" or "official" usage. There may be some overlap in the way various letters are transliterated.

Most of the characters in the system make use of the Latin character (as used in English and French) that best approximates phonetically the Arabic letter that one would otherwise use (for example, ب corresponds to b). Regional variations in the pronunciation of an Arabic letter can also produce some variation in its transliteration (e.g. ﺝ might be transliterated as j by a speaker of the Levantine dialect, or as g by a speaker of the Egyptian dialect).

Those letters that do not have a close phonetic approximation in the Latin script are often expressed using numerals or other characters, so that the numeral graphically approximates the Arabic letter that one would otherwise use (e.g. ع is represented using the numeral 3 because the latter looks like a vertical reflection of the former).

Since many letters are distinguished from others solely by a dot above or below the main portion of the character, the transliterations of these letters frequently use the same letter or number with an apostrophe added before or after (e.g. '3 is used to represent غ).

^1 é, è, ch, and dj are most likely to be used in regions where French is the primary non-Arabic language. dj is especially used in Algerian Arabic.

^2 Mainly in the Nile Valley, the final form is always ى (without dots), representing both final /i/ and /a/. It is the more traditional way of spelling the letter for both cases.

^3 In Iraq, and sometimes in the Persian Gulf, this may be used to transcribe /t͡ʃ/. However, it is most often transcribed as if it were تش. In Egypt, it is instead used for transcribing /ʒ/ (which can be a reduction of /d͡ʒ/). In Israel, it is used to transcribe /ɡ/, as in "ﺭﻣﺎت ﭼﺎﻥ" (Ramat Gan) or "چيميل يافيت" (Gimel Yafit).

^4 Only used in Morocco to transliterate Spanish /t͡ʃ/.

^5 Depending on the region, different letters may be used for the same phoneme.

^6 The dollar sign is only used in Jordan.

^7 This use for h is also found in Morocco.

^8 Capitalized D and T may be used in Lebanon.

^9 The number 8 is used for /ɣ/ only in Lebanon.

^10 Less common forms for /q/.

^11 The letters t and d are used for the pronunciations /t, d/, respectively.

^12 Used in a Palestinian dialect where the letter is sometimes pronounced /t͡ʃ/.

^13 /ʕ/ rarely spelled ⟨a⟩ as names are commonly transcribed in official documents.

^14 Used in Morocco.

Examples

Each of the different varieties of Arabic chat alphabets is influenced by the particular phonology of the Arabic dialect being transcribed and the orthography of the dominant European language in the area—typically the language of the former colonists. Below are some examples of Arabic chat alphabet varieties.

Egyptian Arabic

The frequent use of y and w to represent ى and و demonstrates the influence of English orthography on the romanization of Egyptian Arabic.

Additionally, the letter qāf (ق) is usually pronounced as a glottal stop, like a hamza (ء) in Metropolitan (Cairene) Egyptian Arabic—unlike Standard Arabic in which it represents a voiceless uvular stop. Therefore, in Egyptian Arabizi, the numeral 2 can represent either a Hamza or a qāf pronounced as a glottal stop.

Levantine Arabic

Moroccan Arabic

The use of ch to represent ش demonstrates the influence of French orthography on the romanization of Moroccan Arabic or Darija. French became the primary European language in Morocco as a result of French colonialism.

One of the characteristics of Franco-Arabic as it is used to transcribe Darija is the presence of long consonant clusters that are typically unorthodox in other languages. These clusters represents the deletion of short vowels and the syllabification of medial consonants in the phonology of Darija, a feature shared with and derived from Amazigh languages.

Gulf Arabic

• Spoken along the Persian Gulf coasts of Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, UAE and eastern Saudi Arabia

Iraqi Arabic

• Baghdadi Arabic

Palestinian Bedouin/Triangle Region Arabic

The use of ch to represent ك‎ (kāf) indicates one of the Palestinian Arabic variant pronunciations of the letter in one of its subdialects, in which it is sometimes palatalized to [t͡ʃ] (as in English "chip"). Where this palatalization appears in other dialects, the Arabic letter is typically respelled to either تش‎ or چ‎.

Sudanese Arabic

Chadian Arabic

• Shuwa Arabic spoken in N'Djamena, Chad.

Criticism

The phenomenon of writing Arabic with these improvised chat alphabets has drawn sharp rebuke from a number of different segments of Arabic-speaking communities. While educators and members of the intelligentsia mourn the deterioration and degradation of the standard, literary, academic language, conservative Muslims, as well as Pan-Arabists and some Arab nationalists, view the Arabic Chat Alphabet as a detrimental form of Westernization. Arabic chat alphabets emerged amid a growing trend among Arab youth, from Morocco to Iraq, to incorporate former colonial languages—especially English and French—into Arabic through code switching or as a form of slang. These improvised chat alphabets are used to replace Arabic script, and this raises concerns regarding the preservation of the quality of the language.

See also

• Arablish
• Arabic alphabet
• Varieties of Arabic
• Arabic phonology
• Arabic transliteration
• Romanization of Syriac
• Arabist
• Fingilish, the same idea with Persian
• l33t
• Yamli, a tool for real time Arabic transliteration
• Greeklish, a similar phenomenon in Greek
• Maltese, a related standardized Semitic language written in Latin script

References

1. Ghanem, Renad (20 April 2011). "Arabizi is destroying the Arabic language". Arab News.
2. ^ Al-Fawaz, Nadia (26 December 2014). "Purists alarmed at increasing popularity of Franco-Arabic". Arab News.
3. Hajbi, Soufiane; Chihab, Younes; Ed-Dali, Rachid; Korchiyne, Redouan (2022-01-12). "Natural Language Processing Based Approach to Overcome Arabizi and Code Switching in Social Media Moroccan Dialect". In Maleh, Yassine; Alazab, Mamoun; Gherabi, Noreddine; Tawalbeh, Lo’ai; Abd El-Latif, Ahmed A. (eds.). Advances in Information, Communication and Cybersecurity. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems. Vol. 357. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 57–66. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-91738-8_6. ISBN 978-3-030-91738-8.
4. Hajbi, Soufiane; Amezian, Omayma; Moukhi, Nawfal El; Korchiyne, Redouan; Chihab, Younes (2024-03-01). "Moroccan Arabizi-to-Arabic conversion using rule-based transliteration and weighted Levenshtein algorithm". Scientific African. 23: e02073. Bibcode:2024SciAf..2302073H. doi:10.1016/j.sciaf.2024.e02073. ISSN 2468-2276.
5. ^ Yaghan, M. (2008). "Araby: A Contemporary Style of Arabic Slang". Design Issues 24(2): 39-52.
6. ^ Palfreyman, David; Muhamed, Al Khalil (2007). ""A Funky Language for Teenzz to Use": Representing Gulf Arabic in Instant Messaging". In Danet, Brenda; Herring, Susan C. (eds.). The Multilingual Internet: Language, Culture, and Communication Online. Oxford University Press. pp. 43–64. ISBN 9780199719495.
7. "Panlatin". Firefox Add-ons.
8. "ARABEASY Keyboard type Arabic in English IME". Chrome Web Store. Archived from the original on 2022-03-28. Retrieved 2019-03-31.
9. Hajbi, Soufiane; Chihab, Younes; Ed-Dali, Rachid; Korchiyne, Redouan (2022-01-12). "Natural Language Processing Based Approach to Overcome Arabizi and Code Switching in Social Media Moroccan Dialect". In Maleh, Yassine; Alazab, Mamoun; Gherabi, Noreddine; Tawalbeh, Lo’ai; Abd El-Latif, Ahmed A. (eds.). Advances in Information, Communication and Cybersecurity. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems. Vol. 357. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 57–66. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-91738-8_6. ISBN 978-3-030-91738-8.
10. R. Eskander, M. Al-Badrashiny, N. Habash, O. Rambow Foreign words and the automatic processing of Arabic social media text written in Roman script Proceedings of the First Workshop on Computational Approaches to Code Switching (2014)
11. Aula Khatteb Abu-Liel, Zohar Eviatar & Bracha Nir (2019) Writing between languages: the case of Arabizi, Writing Systems Research, 11:2, 226-238, DOI: 10.1080/17586801.2020.1814482
12. ^ Bjørnsson, Jan Arild (November 2010). "Egyptian Romanized Arabic: A Study of Selected Features from Communication Among Egyptian Youth on Facebook" (PDF). University of Oslo. Retrieved 31 March 2019.
13. Sullivan, Natalie (May 4, 2017). "Writing Arabizi: Orthographic Variation in Romanized Lebanese Arabic on Twitter" (PDF). The University of Texas at Austin. hdl:2152/72420. Archived from the original on Jun 17, 2022.
14. Dua'a Abu Elhija (2014), "A new writing system? Developing orthographies for writing Arabic dialects in electronic media", Writing Systems Research, 6:2, 190-214, doi:10.1080/17586801.2013.868334.
15. Abdurazag Ahmed Saide (December 2019). "Arabizi - Help or Harm? Analysis of the Impacts of Arabizi -threat or Benefit to the Written Arabic Language?". Ohio, US: University of Dayton. Archived from the original on Jul 23, 2023.
16. José de Lerchundi: Rudimentos del árabe vulgar que se habla en el Imperio de Marruecos, Madrid 1872, S. 5, 26, 95.
17. Hajbi, Soufiane; Amezian, Omayma; Moukhi, Nawfal El; Korchiyne, Redouan; Chihab, Younes (2024-03-01). "Moroccan Arabizi-to-Arabic conversion using rule-based transliteration and weighted Levenshtein algorithm". Scientific African. 23: e02073. Bibcode:2024SciAf..2302073H. doi:10.1016/j.sciaf.2024.e02073. ISSN 2468-2276.
18. Miller, Susan Gilson. (2013). A history of modern Morocco. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781139624695. OCLC 855022840.
19. Mohamed Lahrouchi. The Amazigh influence on Moroccan Arabic: Phonological and morphological borrowing. International Journal of Arabic Linguistics, 2018, Arabic-Amazigh contact, 4 (1), pp.39-58. ffhalshs-01798660v2f
20. Conder, Claude Reignier (September 21, 2018). Tent Work in Palestine. BoD – Books on Demand. ISBN 9783734041389 – via Google Books.
21. Hijjo, Nael F. M. (August 25, 2014). "The lexical borrowing in Palestinian colloquial Arabic". Issues in Language Studies. 3 (2). doi:10.33736/ils.1661.2014 – via www.academia.edu.
22. Hellinger, Marlis; Pauwels, Anne (September 25, 2008). Handbook of Language and Communication: Diversity and Change. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9783110198539 – via Google Books.
23. جناحي, نجوى عبداللطيف (2018-01-06). "لنهجر لغة "العربيزي"!". Watan (in Arabic). Retrieved 2019-07-22.

• Bjørnsson, Jan Arild (2010). Egyptian Romanized Arabic: A Study of Selected Features from Communication Among Egyptian Youth on Facebook (Thesis) (PDF). University of Oslo.

• ASCII
• Arabic language
• Instant messaging
• Nonstandard spelling
• Romanization of Arabic
• Internet slang