Above twenty-one, compound numbers are formed by stating the unit then the ten, linked with the and word connector ( wa-, وَ).Note the “9a” in 9abr, and the “7a” in 7elw.įranco-Arabic is very convenient when using phones or computers that don’t Arabic installed, and it has been very popular for more than a decade now.Now that you’ve had a gist of the most useful numbers, let’s move to the writing rules for the tens, the compound numbers, and why not the hundreds, the thousands and beyond (if possible). Note the “5e/7’e” in 5eer/7’eer, and the “7a” in 7asal.

“How are you? How are things?” (Common Egyptian greeting)

“Patience is good.” (Egyptian proverb) / الصَبر حِلو.Įl 9abr 7elw or el sabr 7elw. This way it won't be a surprise next time your Arabic-speaking friend sends you a text in Franco-Arabic! Now let's see what some sentences in Egyptian Arabic, for instance, looks like in Franco-Arabic. These numbers were chosen because they look similar to their corresponding letters in Arabic. So, these Latin letters are often used instead of the numbers. The less commonly used ones are the following:Īs you can see, this second group has close phonemes in English, respectively sh, t, q, s, and d. While three with an apostrophe stands for غ. Two is used to indicate any glottal stop, which is the ء sound. Let's look at the sounds that don't exist in English and how they’re substituted in Franco-Arabic. Franco-Arabic is commonly used for most spoken Arabic dialects. Sounds that do exist in English, however, are spelled with the same Latin letters. Arabic learners find it weird when they see it for the first time because it substitutes Arabic sounds with numbers!įranco-Arabic uses numbers for sounds that don't exist in English. In this lesson, we’re going to discuss a system that has been around for more than a decade now, called the 'Franco-Arabic.'įranco-Arabic is used between friends and on social media. You can use IPA, DIN, and many other systems. There are many ways to transliterate Arabic. The question for this lesson is: How come there are numbers in between letters when people write Arabic in Latin letters?

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Arabic transliteration numbers