Most Arabic textbooks transliterate with dots and hats: ḥ, ʿ, ḍ, ṣ. They mean nothing unless you've already studied phonetics. We use something simpler. Everything is a key you can type — plain letters for most sounds, capitals for the heavy ones, and two numbers for the two throat sounds English has no letter for. Read a word the way it's spelled and you'll usually land on the right sound.
Here's the whole key. Bookmark it; you'll come back.
The full key
| Arabic | English-friendly | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| ا | a / aa | a in "car" (long version) |
| ب | b | b |
| ت | t | t |
| ث | th (or s) | English th in "think" |
| ج | j | j in "jam" |
| ح | 7 | breathy h from deep in the throat |
| خ | kh | ch in Scottish "loch" |
| د | d | d |
| ذ | dh (or z) | English th in "this" |
| ر | r | rolled r |
| ز | z | z |
| س | s | s |
| ش | sh | sh |
| ص | S | emphatic s |
| ض | D | emphatic d |
| ط | T | emphatic t |
| ظ | Z | emphatic z |
| ع | 3 | a tight, strangled sound from the very bottom of the throat |
| غ | gh | French r |
| ف | f | f |
| ق | q | deep k (or a glottal stop in urban speech) |
| ك | k | k |
| ل | l | l |
| م | m | m |
| ن | n | n |
| ه | h | English h |
| و | w / oo / ow | consonant w, or long oo / ow |
| ي | y / ee / iy | consonant y, or long ee / iy |
| ء | ' | glottal stop |
| ة | a / e | final -ah / -eh |
A few rules to read by
Capital letters are emphatic. S, D, T, Z aren't shouting; they mark the four "deep" consonants pronounced with the back of the tongue. They're a different sound entirely, not louder. A capital only ever means one of these four — we never capitalize the start of a sentence or a name, so when you see a capital, it's always emphatic.
Two sounds are numbers. English has no letter for the two sounds that come from the very bottom of your throat, so we borrow the convention everyone already texts in: 3 is ع (it's a backwards ع), and 7 is ح. That's why hello is mar7aba and Arabic is 3arabi. They're the two hardest sounds to fake — and a number is impossible to skim past.
Digraphs are two-letter sounds. sh, kh, th, dh, gh: each pair represents one Arabic letter, not two. starts with one Arabic letter, not s+h.
The apostrophe is the catch in the throat. A bare ' is the glottal stop (ء) — the little catch in the middle of "uh-oh". The other throat sound, ع, is the 3 from the rule above: a different letter and a different sound, never the apostrophe.
Long vowels double up. A short a is the "a" in "cat"; a long aa is the "a" in "car". Same for i / ee and u / oo. Pronouncing (book) as "kit-AHB" instead of "ki-tab" is the difference between sounding Arab and sounding fluent.
Helper vowels get written in. Palestinian hates ending a word on two consonants, so a small vowel slips in to split them up. The word for morning is , not "Sub7", and work is shughul, not "shughl". Dictionaries skip that little vowel. We spell it, because it's what you actually hear, and saying it the dictionary way sounds clipped and foreign.
Palestinian shortcuts. In colloquial Palestinian, ث often softens to a hard s or t, and ذ to z or d. We write words the way they're actually said in the dialect, not the way the dictionary spells them.
The ق has a twin life. In MSA, in Bedouin areas, and up north, it's a deep q from the back of the throat. In urban Palestinian (Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah) it's silent: just a glottal stop. We write q either way; each guide tells you which version to use.
Click anything to hear it
Throughout the site, underlined words are clickable: ("hello"), ("thank you"), ("let's go"). Tap once to play, again to pause.
That's the whole system. Read any word on this site out loud and you'll be close enough to be understood.
