Arabish

Arabish is a combination of an Arabic (العربية) pronunciation, and Latin written characters. Its been widely used lately, on many public advertisements by large multinationals, and as an official name for many successful internet projects world wide. In terms of users, many from the Middle Eastern users on the internet can understand and communicate through Arabish, which made large players in the online industry like Google& Microsoft to introduce tools that transform the text written in Arabish to Arabic.

Significance

Online communication, such as IRC, bulletin board systems, and blogs, are often run on systems or over protocols which do not support codepages or alternate character sets. This system has gained common use and can be seen even in domain names.

It is most commonly used by youths in the Arab world in very informal settings, for example communicating with friends or other youths through the mobile SMS, Short Message Service & Blackberry Messenger (BBM). The Arabish is never used in formal settings and is rarely, if ever, used for long communications. The length of any single communication in ACA rarely if ever exceeds more than a few sentences.

Even though the Arabic language is well integrated with modern versions of Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and Linux, people still use it in Arabic Internet forums and instant Messaging programs such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger because they don't always have Arabic keyboards, or because they are more used to the Latin alphabet layout (QWERTY) for typing.

History

It started 1995-1996 on the IRC, from #Kuwait on EFnet. After facing a problem in delivering the right pronunciations for some of the Arabic letters in English, while communication in IRC at 90's was somehow impossible.

During the last few decades and especially since the 1990s, Western-invented text communication technologies have become increasingly prevalent in the Arab world; for example, personal computers, the World Wide Web, email, bulletin board systems, IRC, instant messaging and mobile phone text messaging. Originally, most of these technologies provided users with only the ISO basic Latin alphabet (ASCII). (Some still lack the Arabic script.) When communicating via these technologies, therefore, Arabic-speakers used the available Latin characters to compose messages in a transliterated form of Arabic. To handle those Arabic letters that have no phonetic approximate in the Latin alphabet, other characters, including numerals and punctuation and would be appropriated, especially when there were some visual resemblance. For example, the numeral "3" is used to represent the Arabic letter "ع" ("Ayn").

There is no universal name for this type of transliteration, as it is relatively young and is only used in an informal setting. Some people have named it Arabic/English because it was most often used to communicate on online chat services; the main name is "Aralish" or "Arabish" (a portmanteau of "Arabic" and "English"). "Arabish" is like "Spanglish" which is a combination of Spanish and English, and is commonly spoken by younger generation, speakers of both languages.

Though Arabish was once a necessity for sending SMS's in Arabic, phone service providers now widely offer Arabic alphabet support. Despite this, use of Arabish continues, in part due to its popularity, and in part due to its usefulness in transliterating Arabic to English.

Some Pan-Arabists, view Arabish as a detrimental form of Westernization. Arabish emerged amid a growing trend among Arab youth, especially in Lebanon and Jordan, to incorporate English into Arabic as a form of slang. Arabish is used to replace Arabic script, and this raises concerns regarding the preservation of the quality of the language. See Arabic and Islam.

Classification and related languages

The Arabish should be classified under Arabic language, as it follows all Arabic grammar and punctuation. But it hundred percent uses the English letters and Numbers in writing the words and sentences.

Converted Characters

Arabic	Arabish	English	DIN 31635
ع	3	A	ʿ
ح	7	H	ḥ
ط	6	T	ṭ
ص	9	S	ṣ
ء	2	A	ʾ
خ	5	KH	ḫ
ق	8	Q	q
ظ	6'	dh or th or z	Ẓ
ث	4	th	Ṯ

Full words examples

English	Arabic	Arabish
English	الإنكليزية	Engliziya
Yes	نعم	Na3am
No	لا	La
Hello	مرحباً	Mar7aban
Welcome	أهلاً	ahlan
Goodbye	مع السلامة	ma3a alsalamah
Please	أرجوك	Arjook
Thank you	شكرًا	Shukran
You're welcome	عفوًا	3afwan
I'm sorry	آسف	Asif
What's your name?	ما اسمك؟	Ma esmok
How much?	كم؟	kam?
I don't understand.	لا أفهم	la afham
I don't speak Arabic.	لا أتكلم بالعربية	La atkalam bi el 3arabiya
I don't know.	لا أعرف	La a3rif
I am hungry.	أنا جائع	ana ja2e3
Orange	برتقالي	borto8ali
Black	أسود	aswad
One	واحد	wa7id
Two	اثنان	ethnan
Three	ثلاثة‎	thalatha
Four	أربعة	arba3ah
Five	خمسة	5amsah

See also

• Arabic alphabet
• Arabic influence on Spanish
• Arabic literature
• Arabist
• Arabic chat alphabet
• Arablish
• Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic

References

• Edward William Lane, Arabic English Lexicon, 1893, 2003 reprint: ISBN 81-206-0107-6, 3064 pages (online edition).
• Allows Arabic Speakers to Write Arabic Using English Alphabet project
• Microsoft Maren: type Arabic in Roman characters and have it converted to Arabic script
• Arabish in Urban Dictionary
• Arabish to Arabic transforming tool article
• Article about Arabish
• Comparison between Chinglish and Arabish
• Zain Corporation Press Release on Sami3ny Service
• Official Zain Sami3ny page
• Arabic Chat Translator

External links

• Arabic chat alphabet
• Arabic keyboard to type Arabic characters online.
• Lane's Arabic-English Lexicon, an 8-volume, 3000-page dictionary available for download in PDF format.
• Learn Classical Arabic Online
• Microsoft Maren: allowing you to type Arabic in Roman characters and have it converted on the fly to Arabic script
• The New Arabic keyboard Layout for fast and easy typing.
• Arab is my language article