Phonetic Arabic keyboard (Arabizi and Darija)

From Arabizi and Darija to Arabic script

Across North Africa and much of the Arab world, people text in Latin letters and use numbers for sounds that English and French don’t have. This keyboard works in the other direction: you keep your usual typing habits and the result appears in the Arabic alphabet. It recognises everyday Darija words such as bezzaf, wakha, 3afak and kifach, as well as Standard Arabic ones like shukran and inshallah. Spelling doesn’t have to be strict either: chokran and shukran both end up as شكرا.

Phonetic Arabic keyboard mapping table

Words mode or letter by letter?

Words mode is the quickest way to write full sentences. Like normal Arabic spelling, it leaves out short vowels, and it offers several spellings when a word is ambiguous: type 3la and press Space to get على. Phonetic mode converts each character the moment you type it, so the same 3la gives علا, because the a becomes an alif. Use it for proper names, rare words or any spelling you want to control letter by letter, and add short vowels with _a, _i or _u straight after the consonant.

Choosing the Morocco, Algeria-Tunisia or Levant variant

The Variant selector adjusts the letters that are written differently from one region to another. In Morocco, g gives ڭ, as in gal → ڭال. In Algeria and Tunisia it gives ڨ. In the Levant and the Gulf, g becomes ج and 9 switches from ق to ص. To convert a text you have already written in one go, use the Arabic-Latin converter. Keyboards suited to Moroccan users are listed on the Morocco page.