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Yamli: A Great Tool for Typing in Arabic
If you've ever tried to type in Arabic, you know it's not necessarily the easiest thing in the world. You can insert Arabic letters using the Insert Symbol menu in Word, but that's pretty tedious. There are also virtual Arabic keyboards out there, such as this one, which allows you to use your own keyboard, or this one, which allows you to use your mouse to click on virtual keys. In both cases, you can copy the text you produce and paste it somewhere else. Then there's Yamli, the "Smart Arabic Keyboard," that allows you to type phonetically using the Roman alphabet, and that converts what you're typing phonetically into Arabic. We think this is pretty cool for a few reasons. As this blog entry from ForeignPolicy.com points out, Yamli gives Arabic speaking people another option for using their own language online, even if they have a Western keyboard. And it's definitely "smart," as its name suggests. Yamli will figure out which Arabic word you're typing, offering you a few choices and narrowing the field as you type more and more. This is especially impressive because there's no standard transliteration system for Arabic, so people may type in the same Arabic word in a number of different ways using the Roman alphabet. Take the phrase the Arabic language: اللغة العربية I typed this phrase in several different ways (allugha alarabiya, al-luga al-arabiyya, 'allugha 'al3arabiyya...), and it figured out what I was trying to type, regardless of whether or not I was typing in hamza or 'ayn, whether I transliterated ghayn as g or gh, etc. The same is true of long vowels; you get كتاب (book) whether you type in kitab or kitaab. You can, as you might guess, leave out short vowels, too. If you want to write he wrote, you can just type ktb and get كتب, or kataba. Since Yamli allows you to start with the Roman alphabet, it's a great tool for students of Arabic who are learning the script. Eventually you'll want to be able to drop the Roman "training wheels" of transliteration, but that takes practice. And playing around with Yamli is one way to practice and test yourself. (CHRIS) Tags: Arabic, Arabic script, learning Arabic, Yamli
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