Writing Systems Research

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Writing between languages: the case of Arabizi

Aula Khatteb Abu-Liel , Zohar Eviatar & Bracha Nir

To cite this article: 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

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Published online: 22 Sep 2020.

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WRITING SYSTEMS RESEARCH
2019, VOL. 11, NO. 2, 226–238
https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2020.1814482

Writing between languages: the case of Arabizi

Aula Khatteb Abu-Liela, Zohar Eviatarb,c and Bracha Nird
a
Learning Disabilities Department, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel; bPsychology Department, University of Haifa,
Haifa, Israel; cThe Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, University of Haifa,
Haifa, Israel; dDepartment of Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The purpose of this paper is to explore the properties of Arabizi as a Received 1 April 2020
system with a ‘bottom-up’ orthography that emerged in the specific Revised 12 August 2020
context of Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC). The study Accepted 16 August 2020
focuses on the dialects spoken in the city of Nazareth and the
KEYWORDS
villages surrounding it (N = 75). We examined the consistency of Writing; spoken Arabic;
choice of Latin letters and Arabic numerals for Spoken Arabic (SA) orthography; non-standard
phonemes from two complimentary perspectives: subjective reports script
and the corpus-based analysis of a unique writing sample in Arabizi,
elicited texts. Our results show a consensus on conventions in the
transcription process, with some expected variation reflecting
differences between regional dialects. This indicated a high degree of
normativization or standardisation in Arabizi orthography.

Introduction
How does a writing system come into being? Why is it necessary? What is its role in society and in
the life of the individual? These are only a few of the questions which fascinate researchers in this
relatively young domain of inquiry (see Cook, Vaid, & Bassetti, 2009). Other questions, just as fas-
cinating, revolve around issues of stability versus change, of externally-motivated standardisation
versus internally-motivated development (see Cook & Ryan, 2016). The current paper focuses the
discussion of these questions on a particular writing system, Arabizi, which emerged in a specific
context, Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC).1
Arabizi is the written representation of Spoken Arabic using Latin letters and Arabic numbers.
At the time when CMC was first introduced, digital platforms such as online chats, short message
services (SMS), and mobile phones were not capable of representing non-Latin script (Warschauer,
Said, & Zohry, 2002), and the only means to communicate effectively was through the use of the
English language and/or Latin-based scripts. As a result, the Latinization of Arabic has become
widely spread among Arab youth (rather than older people) across many Arab countries (Kindt
& Kebede, 2017).2 Already in 2008, Yaghan’s description of the characteristics of Arabizi indicated
that this phenomenon has also spread to other domains of media and communication (see also
Aboelezz, 2012; El-Essawi, 2011). Moreover, Yaghan provides a sample of a spontaneously hand-
written course assignment using Arabizi script and raises the question whether this type of
writing is a possible future development (p. 46).
Several studies have investigated the use of Arabizi as the online language in the Arab world
from different perspectives, focusing particularly on sociolinguistic issues as well as psycholinguis-
tic and computational aspects of language use (e.g. Al-Shaer, 2016; Alghamdi & Petraki, 2018;

CONTACT Aula Khatteb Abu-Liel aulakhatteb@gmail.com Department of Learning Disabilities. University of Haifa,
Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 WRITING SYSTEMS RESEARCH 227

Alsulami, 2019; Palfreyman, 2006; Palfreyman & Khalil, 2003; Pasha et al., 2014; Sperrazza, 2014;
Warschauer et al., 2002). Very few studies have explored the consistency of the orthography
(e.g. Aboelezz, 2009; Palfreyman & Khalil, 2003; Yaghan, 2008), and provide only initial statistical
data on the transcription conventions used (e.g. Sullivan, 2017). The purpose of the current
paper is to explore the properties of Arabizi as a system with an orthography that is considered
to be non-standard, and that emerged in a bottom-up3 process. Our main aim is to conduct a
large-scale corpus-based analysis of the actual usage of Arabizi and to assess the level of stability
– and thus, normativity – of this orthography.

Standard and non-standard orthographies

Orthography is considered as standard when the set of symbols used in the writing system, such as
graphic symbols (graphemes), diacritics and punctuation marks, can be related to prescribed rules
and conventions. These include pronunciation rules, rules delineating word boundaries, capitalisa-
tion rules, etc. (Coffin & O’Halloran, 2009; Coulmas, 1996; 2003; Rogers, 2005). Standard orthogra-
phy is typically manifested when speakers adopt graphic principals for mapping the phonemic
system of a language in what are considered correct or proper ways of writing speech down
(Donaldson, 2017).
Such standard graphic conventions also include top-down practices of phonemic transcription.
For example, Hanyu pinyin is the Latin-based orthography for Mandarin that was formally adopted
in 1958 in the People’s Republic of China, and the international standard transcription system for
Chinese. Another similar case of top-down language planning is that of Swahili orthography
(Bradley, 2010). African local languages had been written for centuries in Arabic letters but
were forcibly re-written in Latin orthography in the twentieth century. This new Swahili orthogra-
phy is currently the formal orthography that is taught in schools (Bolton, 2016).
However, as Donaldson (2017) further suggests, an orthography can also exist as a normalised
(in contrast to normative) model of language representation. Such a non-standard orthography is
defined as any orthography that differs from the officially recognised prestige language variant as
it is used primarily in written language and formal speech situations (Trotta, 2011). As pointed out
by Deumert and Lexander (2013), a non-standard form of writing can be characterised also by het-
erography that distinguishes it from the scholarly writings meant for wider circulation and
measured against international standards.
Instances where orthography is used without explicit rules can be considered a type of ‘bottom-
up’ literacy, a term we use to refer to the emergence of writing conventions that are not subject to
institutional evaluation and judgement or to the dictation of policy makers (Bradley, 2010; Ivković,
2013; Maguire, 1995). The focus of the present study is a Latinized orthography that developed in
such a bottom-up process, the Arabizi orthography that developed in the specific context of Com-
puter-Mediated Communication (CMC4).
Barasa (2016) assumes that CMC accommodates very specific genres. Crystal (2002) describes
the language of CMC as less formal than traditional written genres and is more accommodating to
informal speech styles and codes in many aspects, owing to its dialogic nature. Other studies have
suggested that CMC contributes to the emergence of non-standard orthographies by transferring
vernaculars into writing in digital contexts (Androutsopoulos, 2015; Hinrichs, 2006). Some
researchers claim that CMC-language should be viewed as a hybrid language (Crystal, 2002;
Ferrara, Brunner, & Whittemore, 1991; Murray, 1988; Yates, 1996). Others suggest that it is a
hybrid between two styles, sharing features with both spoken conversation and written text (Dor-
leijn & Nortier, 2008; El-Essawi, 2011).
The influence of CMC on the use of non-standard orthographies has been documented for
Greek (e.g. Androutsopoulos, 2009; Georgakopoulou, 1997; Koutsogiannis & Mitsikopoulou,
2003), German (Androutsopoulos, 2000), French (Van Compernolle & Williams, 2010), Russian
and Serbian (e.g. Hentschel, 1999; Ivković, 2013; Magner, 2001); and Latin-scripted Arabic (e.g.
228 A. K. ABU-LIEL ET AL.

Haggan, 2007; Palfreyman & Khalil, 2003; Sullivan, 2017; Warschauer et al., 2002). The present study
takes a unique perspective on the issue of writing in Arabizi, since it does not explore the use of the
orthography in CMC, but rather in the context of a writing task in an academic environment – a
kind of task that is almost exclusively reserved for writing in Modern Standard Arabic.

Aspects of written and spoken Arabic

Arabic has two forms: Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Spoken Arabic (SA). MSA is common to
all Arabic speaking countries for high-register functions, including writing, religious sermons, and
speeches (Ferguson, 1959). It is the language of the vast majority of print publications including
books, magazines, and newspapers. Before formal schooling, Arabic first language speakers are
exposed to oral and written MSA in educational TV programmes, children’s programmes and
news broadcasts. MSA is officially studied at school and is acquired through formal schooling
(Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2000) and has well-defined orthographic standards (Watson, 2002).
Spoken Arabic (SA) is the mother tongue of all Arabic speakers. It is used for everyday conversa-
tion, for songs, films, and for television advertisements (Hudson, 2002; Saiegh-Haddad, 2004).
There is a continuum of spoken dialects (Harris & Hodges, 1981) which are distributed geographi-
cally (Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf Arabic, North African), but also by social class, gender, as well as
other sociological factors. Dialects differ phonologically, lexically, morphologically, and syntacti-
cally from one another (Maamouri et al., 2014; Watson, 2002). Thus, the Arabic dialects spoken
in Palestine do not constitute one more or less homogeneous linguistic unit (Palva, 1984).
Unlike MSA, spoken Arabic has no standardised orthography, and no published set of rules. On
the contrary, a wide range of conventions are used by native speakers in naturally occurring
text, resulting in inconsistent orthography even with Arabic script (e.g. Habash, Diab, &
Rambow, 2012). This can be claimed also for the use of Latin-based Arabizi, which closely
mirrors colloquial Arabic pronunciation. In this orthography, SA is represented by a combination
of Latin letters, which stand for the Arabic phonemes (according to English pronunciation), and of
Arabic numerals that are used as supplements when Arabic phonemes are nonexistent in English,
but resemble Arabic letters and their shapes (e.g. 2=‫= ﺀ‬/ʔ/, 3==‫ ﻋ‬/ʕ/, 7= ‫ =ﺣ‬/ħ/) (Garra, 2007; Pal-
freyman & Khalil, 2003; Sperrazza, 2014).
Moreover, the dialectal variation that is typical of Spoken Arabic adds a particular complexity to
the process of transcription (as in the case of Manding, for example; see Donaldson, 2017). Thus,
since language in its spoken form shows phonological variation between dialects, the way people
utter the same phonemes differs among Arabic speaking countries and even among different
regions in the same country, depending on the specific spoken dialects in each area. For
example, the colloquial Palestinian dialects vary in their articulation between the urban /dˤ- ðˤ-
d/ for /ðˤ/ for /z/ and /s, t/ for /tˤ/, and the respective ‘traditional’ literary Arabic articulation /ð/
and /ðˤ/ of rural and Bedouin dialects (see Horesh, 2000; Levin, 1994; Palva, 1984). The four
basic emphatics /sˤ- dˤ- tˤ- ðˤ/ (especially at word-final position) are often pronounced as non-
emphatics, mainly in urban dialects, as in /s/ for /sˤ/ in colloquial Arabic /sandūq/ for literary
Arabic /sˤundūq/ ‘box’ (Rosenhouse, 2002). In the urban dialects of Jerusalem, Jaffa and Haifa,
interdental spirants have been replaced with their postdental stop equivalents. In fact, in the Pales-
tinian area, interdentals are a prominent distinctive feature between urban and non-urban dia-
lects. The interdental spirants /θ, ð/ (‫ ﺫ‬,‫ )ﺛ‬have been replaced with their postdental stop
equivalents /t, d/ (‫ ﺩ‬,‫( )ﺗ‬e.g, maab:uθ / maab:ut). Furthermore, the pronunciation of qa:f is con-
sidered the most prominent distinctive feature for the classification of Palestinian Arabic dialects
(Palva, 1984). Thus, the postvelar /q/ is used by a great majority of Muslim and Christian villagers in
the northern area of the Galilee, and the shift from /q/ to strong guttural /k/ is documented for
many central Palestinian villages (e.g. kult ‘I said’, kalb ‘heart’) (Blanc, 1965). In the Bedouin dialects,
/g/ alternates with /ʤ/, as in qahwe (rural) / ghawa (Bedouin) / ʔahwe (urban) ‘coffee’ (Levin,
1994; Rosenhouse, 1998). Differences between the dialects also manifest in the vowels system.
 WRITING SYSTEMS RESEARCH 229

Abd-El-Fatth (1980) notes that under certain circumstances /u,i/ may be heard as /o,e/ respectively,
mainly near gutturals /h, x, ʔ, r/ and emphatics (sˤ- dˤ- tˤ- ðˤ). Rosenhouse (2008) provides some
examples of this process in short vowels as they are used in Nazareth and other parts of the
Galilee: bethum / bethom ‘their house’, ʔurs / ʔors ‘wedding’, zirr / zerr ‘button’, ʔinti / ʔinte ‘you’,
bitħibbi / bitħibbe ‘you like, love’. Another phonological process is vowel insertion, which involves
the simplification of consonant clusters as in the case of the pronunciation of the name ʔɪsm as
ʔɪsɪm in MSA in contrast with the spoken dialect.
In the current study, the orthographic representation of SA is expected to reflect this variation,
and its lack of standardisation (e.g. Bahrainwala, 2011; Muhammed, Farrag, Elshamly, & Abdel-
Ghaffar, 2011; Palfreyman & Khalil, 2003). As an example, consider the following popular Arabizi
spellings for the word meaning ‘liberty’: ta7rir, t7rir, tahrir, ta7reer, tahreer (Darwish, 2013).
Below, we investigate the variation and consistency in spelling words in Palestinian Spoken
Language (PSL5), focusing on the dialects spoken in city of Nazareth and the villages surrounding
it. Our aim is to investigate whether the writing of PSL is normativized in light of dialect variations,
especially in the absence of conventions in the transcription process. The representations of SA
phonemes were examined based on two complimentary perspectives – subjective reports from
the actual language users, and the same language-users’ spelling practices in written extended
discourse (Berman, 2008). As noted by Yaghan (2008), the use of Latin-based SA in the context
of written text production is not typical and even surprising. In fact, all previous sociolinguistic
and psycholinguist studies that dealt with the orthographic properties of Arabizi relied on data
from blogs and other forms of CMC. In contrast, our participants’ writing tasks (see Method
section below) are considered as asynchronous communication.
Similarly to a previous study that examined the use of Arabizi among Palestinians (Abu Elhija,
2014), the present study analyzes common orthographic variants in Latinized Arabic. However,
Abu Elhija’s comprehensive study of Facebook posts from various regions, dialects, and social
groups (see also Zoabi, 2012), did not allow her to control the source of variation. In contrast,
our research methodology of contrasting writers’ reports on their use of Arabizi with their
actual production of offline texts allowed us to examine the characteristics of the orthography
both within participants (individual consistency) and between participants (sample consistency).

Method
Participants
The sample consisted of 77 8th graders, native Arabic speakers (37 females and 40 males), ages
ranging between 13 and 15 (Mean = 14.26, SD = 0.488) recruited from a private Christian junior
high school in an urban centre in the north of Israel. All of the students are proficient Arabizi
users. The majority of students are Christians, however Muslims students (mostly from nearby vil-
lages) also attend the school. None of the participants suffered from neurological, emotional, or
learning disorders. These data were obtained from homeroom teachers, school counsellors and
psychologists. All the participants gave their parental consent signature, and verbally expressed
willingness to participate.

Materials and procedure

(1) Transcription of MSA consonants, short and long vowels – subjects were asked to specify the
Latin characters that they use for the sounds of SA. Each student was given a list of MSA
letters representing Arabic phonemes (consonants, short and long vowels), and was asked
to write the Arabizi equivalent that they use for these sounds.
230 A. K. ABU-LIEL ET AL.

(2) Composition of two essays - In order to characters the Arabizi orthography and examine het-
erographic spelling in Arabizi, our subjects were asked to write two essays in Arabizi on a com-
puter, choosing from four different topics: ‘the Class Trip’; ‘What will I be like in 10 years’;
‘Positive and Negative aspects of Facebook’ or ‘The Importance of Keeping the Environment
Clean’. The topics were counterbalanced across subjects.

Analyses
The choice of Latin-based transcription of Arabic phonemes was analyzed by comparing the
responses of all participants and calculating the preferences for particular phoneme-to-character
correspondence. In addition, the distributions of word forms (i.e. transcriptions of SA) from all
essays were compared via Computerized Language ANalysis (CLAN; MacWhinney, 2002), a soft-
ware dedicated to the analysis of spoken and written language samples.

Results
Grapheme selection
The participants were given a table with all the letters in MSA in the first column, and were asked
to enter the Arabizi character that they use to represent the sound of each grapheme. The results
can be classified into two categories of the graphemic inventory that writers can access in order to
transcribe spoken language into written Arabizi. In the first category are Latin letters, and in the

Table 1. Phoneme-to-character correspondences in Latinized Palestinian colloquial Arabic.

Latin Character Alternatives
MSA Letters IPA Symbol (percent selection) Numerals (percent selection)
‫ ؤ‬,‫ أ‬,‫ ء‬,‫ئ‬ ʔ 2 (100%)
‫ا‬ aː a (100%)
‫ب‬ b b (100%)
‫ت‬ t t (100%)
‫ث‬ θ th (100%)
‫ج‬ ʤ j (54.5%) g (32.5%), g or j (13%)
‫ح‬ ħ 7 (100%)
‫خ‬ x 5 (100%)
‫د‬ d d (100%)
‫ذ‬ ð d (80.5%) th (16.9%), z (2.6%)
‫ر‬ r r (100%)
‫ز‬ z z (100%)
‫س‬ s s (100%)
‫ش‬ ʃ sh (100%)
‫ص‬ sˤ s (100%)
‫ض‬ dˤ d (100%) x (3.9%), t (3.9%)
‫ط‬ tˤ t (55.8%) 6 (23.4%), t or 6 (20.8%)
‫ظ‬ ðˤ, zˁ d (63.6%) th (22.1%), z (14.3%)
‫ع‬ ʕ 3 (100%)
‫غ‬ ɣ 3’ (100%)
‫ف‬ f f (100%)
‫ق‬ q q (70.1%) k (24.7%), q or k (5.2%)
‫ك‬ k k (100%)
‫ل‬ l l (100%)
‫م‬ m m (100%)
‫ن‬ n n (100%)
‫ه‬ h h (100%)
‫و‬ w w (58.4%) o or w (26%), o (15.6%)
‫ي‬ j e (55.8%) y or e (22.1%); e, i (18.2%);
y, e or i (3.9%);
 WRITING SYSTEMS RESEARCH 231

second are numbers that are graphically similar to the MSA letter representing the sound. The
summary statistics over the 77 participants are shown in Table 1.
The bulk of the phoneme transcriptions are Latin letters. Out of the 24 phonemes that are tran-
scribed as Latin letters, sixteen phonemes have direct correspondences with English (Table 2). Six
phoneme transcriptions are numerals (Table 3).
The comparison of the students’ reports revealed no variability in these transcriptions, with
100% agreement among the participants.
Arabic has four emphatic phonemes which have unique graphemes. These were often reduced
to their nonemphatic counterparts, as can be seen in Table 4.
As shown by Table 4, other than /tˤ/, which is written as the number 6 (compare to the gra-
pheme ‫)ﻃ‬, the three other consonants are written as Latin letters. The consonant /sˤ/ is consistently
represented as s (compare to ‫)ﺻ‬, while the other two letters show variability.
Seven phonemes (two of which are emphatics, see Table 4) have more than one possible tran-
scription. Some of the Latin letters represent multiple phonemes: t is used to represent two
different Arab phonemes (again, each with its grapheme, ‫ ﺗ‬and ‫)ﻃ‬, as well as k (compare to ‫ ﻛ‬,‫)ﻗ‬
and z (‫ ﺯ‬,‫ ;)ﺫ‬th is used to represent three different phonemes, each with its own graphemic rep-
resentation (‫ ﻇ‬,‫ ﺫ‬,‫ ;)ﺛ‬and d is used to represent four different phonemes (‫ ﺫ‬,‫ ﺩ‬,‫ ﻇ‬,‫)ﺿ‬. Importantly,
these seven letters represent phonemes which differ among the dialects spoken by our partici-
pants (as indicated in the Method section, the school is a regional school, and the majority of
the students are from Nazareth and have an urban dialect, while other students are from the
near villages and have a rural dialect). Thus it is clear that the phonological characteristics of
the spoken dialect are reflected in the grapheme-phoneme relations of Arabizi (Table 5).
As shown by Table 6, there is a consensus among our students about the transcription of the
short vowels but not of long vowels. Interestingly, some of the varieties for long vowels are dou-
blings of the Latin grapheme.

Orthographic variation in written texts

In total, 154 Arabizi texts were analyzed to determine the extent of orthographic variation in actual
usage. In this section, we focus on graphemic variation across words, based on types and tokens.
The total number of different word types in the essays was 4,660, distributed among 16,142 word
tokens.
As shown by Figure 1, 88% of the types have only one orthographic representation and show
no variation, while 9% have two variations and only 3% have more than one variation. That is,
there is quite a high degree of normativization and even convention in the transcription
process among our students.
More variability was found among tokens than among types, although in this analysis too, 70%
of the tokens show no variation. As shown by Figure 2, 14% have two variations and only 16% have
more than one variation.

Discussion
In this study we focused on orthographic Latinization of Spoken Arabic that is embodied by
Arabizi. This orthography emerged in a ‘bottom-up’ process, that is, it was not defined by any pre-
scribed norm but rather developed as a common system from actual practices. The motivation for
the emergence of this system was the context of CMC, but as our study shows, the practice can be

Table 2. Arabic phonemes that have direct correspondences with English Letters.
Arabic Letters ‫ه‬ ‫ن‬ ‫م‬ ‫ل‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ف‬ ‫ش‬ ‫س‬ ‫ز‬ ‫ر‬ ‫د‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ا‬
Latin Transcription h n m l K f sh s Z R d th t b a
232 A. K. ABU-LIEL ET AL.

Table 3. Arabic Phonemes which have no analogues in latin letters and are represented by numerals.
Arabic Letters ‫ ؤ‬,‫ أ‬,‫ ء‬,‫ئ‬ ‫ح‬ ‫خ‬ ‫ط‬ ‫ع‬ ‫غ‬
IPA Symbol ʔ Ħ x tˤ ʕ ɣ
Numerals 2 7 5 6 3 3’

easily extended to other writing contexts, such as text production (see Yaghan, 2008). Moreover,
the orthography that is used by the students who participated in the study is largely normativized,
indicating little variation. This was shown by the analysis of phoneme-to-character correspon-
dences in Latinized Palestinian Colloquial Arabic, alongside with the actual orthography used
by the same speaker-writers in the production of extended offline discourse.
Our data indicate that Arabizi in northern Palestine is indeed a transcribed orthography, rather
than transliteration, as the writers attempt to match the pronunciation of their specific dialect
rather than replacing one grapheme for another. Thus, both the students’ reports on phoneme-
to-character correspondences and their actual productions in extended discourse written in
Arabizi closely mirror the spoken dialects of Nazareth and of the rural areas around it. From
here onwards, the discussion of the results relates to findings from both the phonemic selections
and the spellings of the words extracted from the written texts.

Phonological transcription
Sixteen Arabic phonemes that can be said to have approximations in English were consistently
represented with the same Latin graphemes in Arabizi (see Table 2 above). The same results
were also reported by other studies (e.g. Aboelezz, 2009; Eskander, Habash, Rambow, & Tomeh,
2013; Garra, 2007; Palfreyman & Khalil, 2003; Sperrazza, 2014). The remaining consonants that
were represented by Latin letters vary due to regional differences in pronunciation.
The variations were in the phonemes that have no equivalents in English, specifically the
emphatic consonants /sˤ- dˤ- tˤ- ðˤ/ and /ʒ/, /q/, /θ/, and /ð/ as well as long vowels. Moreover,
these phonemes have been documented as distinguishing between speakers of different collo-
quial Palestinian dialects, particularly the emphatics and the uvular /q/ (Kaye & Rosenhouse, 1997).

Emphatic consonants
Each of the four emphatic consonants /sˤ- dˤ- tˤ- ðˤ/ also have a non-emphatic counterpart (/‫ﺫ‬, ð /, /
t/). Our results show that in the transcription to Arabizi, the non-emphatic con- ,‫ ﺗ‬/ d /, and ,‫ ﺩ‬/ ,/s ,‫ﺳ‬
sonants replace their emphatic counterparts, as the same graphemic representation was used (for
instance, /tˤ/ and /t/ were both usually written as t, /s/ and /sˤ/ both written as s). Even though this
lack of differentiation may result in opacity in the reading process, most ambiguities can be in fact
readily resolved through context. Palva (1984) and Rosenhouse (2002) note that the four basic
emphatics /sˤ- dˤ- tˤ- ðˤ/ are usually pronounced as non-emphatic phonemes in some colloquial
Palestinian dialects, especially the urban one. Similar observations were reported also by El-
Khaissi (2015) and by Abu Elhija (2014), who note that youngsters from Lebanon and Egypt
rarely pronounce pharyngeal consonants. While in some Arabic countries such as Jordan Arabizi
users rely on numbers to indicate emphatic consonants (such as 6 for /tˤ/; see Bani-Ismail, 2012;

Table 4: Reduction of emphatics to nonemphatic counterparts.

MSA letter emphatic IPA symbol Arabizi letter (% of sample)
‫ط‬ tˤ t (54.5%), 6 (23.4%), t or 6 (20.8%) t or d (1.3%)
‫ص‬ sˤ s (100%)
‫ض‬ dˤ d (92.2%), x (3.9%), t (3.9%)
‫ظ‬ ðˤ, zˁ d (59/7%), th (22.1%), z (14.3%), x (3.9%)
 WRITING SYSTEMS RESEARCH 233

Table 5. MSA letters that revealed variability in their representation in Arabizi

Arabic Letter IPA Symbol The Most Common Latin Character Alternatives (percent selection)
‫ج‬ ʤ j g (32.5%), g or j (13%)
‫ذ‬ ð d th (16.9%), z (2.6%)
‫ض‬ dˤ d x(3.9%), t (3.9%)
‫ظ‬ ðˤ, zˁ d th (22.1%), z (14.3%), x (3.9%)
‫ق‬ q q k (24.7%), q or k (5.2%)
‫و‬ o or w (26%), o (15.6%)
‫ي‬ J e y or e (22/1%); e, i (18.2%); y, e or i (3.9%)

Table 6: Transcription of short and long vowels.

The most common Latin character Alternatives
Short and long vowels IPA symbol (percent selection) (percent selection)
Short Vowels
َ ‫فتحة‬ a a (100%)
ُ ‫ضمة‬ u u (100%)
ِ ‫كسرة‬ i e (100%)
Long Vowels
‫ا‬ aː A aa (7.8%)
‫و‬ uː, oː O w/o (13%), oo (2.6%)
‫ي‬ iː, eː e/y y (29.9%), ee (18.2%), e (11.7%)

Figure 1. Distribution of orthographic variability by type (N=4660).

Yaghan, 2008) this did not occur in our written data. In fact, only one student reported that he uses
this orthographic representation. This student comes from a rural area.

Qa:f
In the students’ reports on phoneme-to-character correspondences, the representations for the
sound of the MSA letter qa:f were divided between q (70.1%), as pronounced in MSA and in
some rural dialects, and k (24.7%), in accordance with the pronunciation in some rural dialects
(‫ﺑﺘﻮﻗﻌ‬, btwaka3 ‘I expect’). The remaining students (5.2%) reported that they use both variations.
The analysis of the written texts revealed that high-register words that were borrowed from
MSA into colloquial Arabic (such as ‫ﺃﺻﺪﻗﺎﺀ‬, asdqa2 ‘friends’) retain the pronunciation of the qa:f
as a voiceless uvular stop. However, our students were also found to favour the representation
of the glottal stop (‫ﺀ‬, /ʔ/) for qa:f, written as 2 (for example ‫ﺑﻘﺪﺭ‬, b2dar ‘I can’; ‫ﻭﻗﺘ‬, wa2et ‘time’).
Our results also correspond to Sullivan’s (2017) finding for Twitter messages from Lebanon (and
see also Gordon, 2011). In fact, qa:f is one of the most distinctive phonemes when comparing
the dialects in our sample (e.g. ‫ﻣﺴﺘﻘﺒﻠ‬, most2bal, mostakbal, Mostaqbal ‘future’).
234 A. K. ABU-LIEL ET AL.

Figure 2. Distribution of orthographic variability by Tokens (N = 16,142).

Jeem
In the students’ reports on phoneme-to-character correspondences, the representations for the
sound of the MSA letter jeem were divided between g (86.5%) and j (13.5%). Previous studies
of Latinized Arabic have noted that /‫ﺟ‬/ is not fully standardised, again due to dialectal differences.
However, in the analysis of the texts produced by the students, the sound corresponding to the
letter /‫ﺟ‬/ was completely conventionalised as j. The grapheme g is generally more popular in
Egypt. Our results also correspond to Sullivan’s (2017) findings as well as to Abu Elhija’s (2014)
and El-Khaissi’s (2015) data.

Short and long vowels

Our data from the phoneme-to-symbol correspondences indicated that the three short vowels are
written consistently as specific graphemes (a for //, u for / / and e for / /). Thus, they are fully stan-
dardised. In contrast, long vowels were represented with a much greater range of variation. The
analysis of the written texts further revealed that the short vowels were usually omitted, with
the exception of the short vowel // that was retained in a few words (such as ‫ َﻧ َﺘ َﻨ َﻔﺴ‬ntnfas
‘breathe’). This finding matches Yaghan’s (2008) report, who noted that the use of vowels is
optional in Arabizi, and that they can even be omitted depending on the reader’s familiarity
with the specific variety of Arabizi, the contextual clarity of the word, and sometimes the
allowed number of characters per message. Yaghan (2008) also assumes that when vowels are
used, the general trend is that i or e represent the kasra () and that u, ou or o are used to represent
the damma (). Our participants represent kasra as e and damma as u. In the few cases where the
short vowels are not omitted, the most common use of e was to represent both the short vowel
kasra / / and the long vowel /e:/ (wade3, ‫ﺿﻌ‬ ِ ‫‘ ﻭ‬situation’; tabe3a ‫‘ ﻃﺒﻴﻌﺔ‬nature’).
The most consistent long vowel was /a:/, typically written as a (92.2%) or as aa (in 7.8% of all
reports). This finding was even more pronounced in the text analysis, such that the long vowel /a:/
was written almost always as a (ray7en, ‫‘ ﺭﺍﻳﺤﻴﻨ‬we are going’), and only in a few words as the redu-
plicated vowel (shbaab, ‫‘ ﺷﺒﺎﺑ‬young’). This again corresponds with Sullivan’s (2017) findings, who
attributed the limited use of e as the representation of the long vowel among Lebanese young-
sters to the impact of French pronunciation. In addition, the written texts revealed the students
use o or u to represent the long vowel ‫( ﻭ‬for example, yejo or yeju /‫ﻳﺠﻮ‬/ ‘they will come’; yel3abo
or yl3bu for / ‫ﻳﻠﻌﺒﻮ‬/ ‘they are playing’). That is, in the Palestinian dialect there is still no standardised
 WRITING SYSTEMS RESEARCH 235

way to write vowels, even within the same participant. This could be attributed to the consonantal
Arabic alphabet, where vowels are written as diacritical markings on top of or below words, and
are usually not represented in unvowelled orthography (e.g. Abu–Rabia, 2002; Saiegh-Haddad,
2004; Saiegh-Haddad & Henkin-Roitfarb, 2014).

Number and apostrophe use

Among the most normativized characters in our data were the six numerals used for the transcrip-
tion of the following phonemes: / ʔ / = 2, / ħ / = 7, / ʕ / = 3, / ɣ / = 3’, /x /=5, and / tʕ /=6. This is an
example of how Arabizi users treat the writing practice as transliteration (graphic transposition):
certain numeral have conventionalised as characters, as in the case of 3 that exclusively represents
/ ʕ /, and 7 that represents / ħ /. The same appears to be true of the numeral 2, which represents
the glottal stop / ʔ /. However, in a few specific cases our students did not represent the pronun-
ciations of the characters but rather favoured digraphs that resemble Arabic letters in their shapes
(Palfreyman & Khalil, 2003; Sperrazza, 2014). Another strategy for differentiating between closely
similar graphemes was the use of the apostrophe together with numerals, such as using 3 for / ʕ /
and 3’ for / ɣ / (see Aboelezz, 2009; Haggan, 2007; Mostari, 2009; Palfreyman & Khalil, 2007).

Conclusion
To conclude, across the large sample of phoneme-to-symbol correspondences and spelling words
that the students produced in their texts, we found high stability in the use of orthographical con-
ventions, and only marginal variability. Despite the fact that our students speak different dialects,
they use largely the same standards and rules while writing in Arabizi. This is an indication of a how
quickly bottom-up orthography can become stable. As Fabian (2001, p. 66) comments: ‘What is
negatively deplored as lack of exactitude should be seen positively as expressive of a great
degree of freedom which the native speaker enjoys both as a writer and a reader’.
We began this paper by asking three questions: How does a writing system come into being?
Why is it necessary? What is its role in society and in the life of the individual? We have answered
these questions to the best of our ability: Arabizi came into being as a response to the technical
limitations of computer keyboards. Its development facilitated new possibilities for the use of
spoken Arabic, and its intrusion to the domain of written language. It fulfils a necessary role in
modern communication, while at the same time allowing new freedom of expression for Arabic
speakers.

Notes
1. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been defined as ‘the practice of using networked computers
and alphabetic text to transmit messages between people or groups of people across space and time’ (Jacobs
2008:470).
2. Ivković defines Latinization as: ‘ … the substitution of native, non-Latin-based graphemes with graphemes
from the Latin alphabet in languages where standard usage prescribes a different writing system’ (Ivković,
2015, p. 2). In the pre-Internet age, Latinization was confined to transcription (writing based on attempts to
match pronunciation) and transliteration (writing based on replacing one character for another) of texts
written in non-Latin-based scripts. Since English is commonly used also in the online Arab sphere (Bjørnsson,
2010), Latin script is highly accessible to Arabic-speaking CMC users (Shoufan & Alameri, 2015). Moreover,
despite the increasing support of Arabic in many platforms and the availability of Arabic alphabet keyboards,
the familiarity of the English keyboard has facilitated its use (Bies et al., 2014; Darwish, 2013).
3. Gorter (2006) distinguished between two main factors that affect multilingual aspects of writing. The first is
‘top-down’ or in Ivković’s terms ‘from above’. In this context, language planning is run by government, by
leaders, and by language experts (Bradley, 2010; Ivković, 2016; Maguire, 1995). In contrast, ‘bottom-up’ or
‘from below’ processes describes the language practices of mostly anonymous, ‘non-expert’ users.
236 A. K. ABU-LIEL ET AL.

4. Computer-mediated communication (CMC) has been defined as ‘the practice of using networked computers
and alphabetic text to transmit messages between people or groups of people across space and time’ (Jacobs
2008:470).
5. Bearing in mind that PLS contains a number of different dialects, mainly Muslim, Christian, and Druze speakers
of rural and urban, beside Bedouin dialects (Rosenhouse, 2002).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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