GAME 01
Drift
Clear the sky
Words fall in gently and pick up speed. Type one, press space, watch it burst.
PLAY WITH PURPOSE · العربية
Arabic typing games
Make repetition feel lighter. Three short games, all played in Arabic. Every 4 clean hits raises the level, and it never drops back. Scores are kept in this browser; signed in, a new personal best also goes to the leaderboard.
GAME 02
Orbit
Hold the ring
Characters circle the core. Strike each one before its arc runs out.
GAME 03
Signal
Beat the pulse
One word, one shrinking window. Keep the chain alive as the pulse quickens.
Practising Arabic with games
Arabic is written in its own script, whose marks combine with base letters into single written units — so one keystroke is not one character on screen. It also runs right to left.
The speed test and the games draw on one bank of 64 common Arabic words — 31 distinct characters in all, averaging 3.5 written units per word. All three games pull from it, so the vocabulary you meet while playing is the vocabulary the speed test measures you on. Difficulty rises with every four clean hits and never falls back — a round ends when you stop keeping up, rather than when a timer decides.
The thing that surprises people about Arabic is the arithmetic. A word that looks like 3.5 units on screen took more keystrokes than that, because Arabic vowel signs and conjunct forms are typed as separate presses and then rendered together. Accuracy matters more than usual here: an error inside a cluster is not always visible at a glance.
Frequency beats duration in Arabic by a wider margin than in most languages, because what you are building is a composing order and composing orders decay quickly between sessions. Ten minutes daily will take you further than an hour on Sunday.
A frequency count of the bank explains why early progress feels fast and later progress does not. The top ten characters cover about 70% of everything these Arabic words contain; past that you are learning characters that turn up once in a paragraph, which takes as long to automate and pays back far less often.
- Writing system
- Arabic
- Keyboard layout
- Arabic 101
- Direction
- right to left
- Mapped characters
- 31
- Practice words
- 64
- Distinct characters
- 31
- Average word
- 3.5 units
Characters that come up most in these Arabic words
- ا37
- ل34
- م18
- ن16
- ي12
- ب9
- ع8
- ك8
- ه8
- أ7
- ر7
- ق7
Counted across the 64 practice words — the ones worth recognising first.
اليد الهادئة تجد صف الارتكاز بسهولة وثقةLetters that change shape as you type them
Arabic letters take different forms depending on where they sit in a word — isolated, initial, medial or final — and most connect to the letter after them. This is handled entirely by the font and the text renderer: you press one key per letter and the shapes resolve themselves as the word builds.
It does mean the character you just typed can visibly change when you type the next one, which is disconcerting at first and is the main reason Arabic typists learn to watch the screen rather than the keys.
Short vowels are normally not written. The diacritics that mark them — harakat — exist and are used in the Qur'an, in poetry and in material for learners, but ordinary Arabic text omits them and readers supply them from context. Typing them requires a modifier and is rarely needed.
The Arabic 101 layout is the common standard. Arabic 102 adds keys for a few characters used in other Arabic-script languages.
Questions about typing in Arabic
Do I need an Arabic keyboard?
No. Printed Arabic keycaps are sold and they are not worth it for a touch typist: you are trying to learn a map, and a visible map delays that. Select the Arabic 101 layout in your system settings and use the on-screen guide below instead, which you can turn off once it stops helping.
Which Arabic keyboard layout do these games use?
Arabic 101, with 31 characters mapped across the standard key positions. Arabic runs right to left, which both the practice text and the cursor respect. The 64 practice words between them use 31 distinct characters. The keyboard guide below the typing area shows the physical key and the character it produces together, so you are never reading a layout diagram in one window while typing in another.
Do the games use real Arabic words?
Yes — all three draw on the same bank of common Arabic words the speed test samples. Nothing is generated or transliterated for the sake of the game, so a score here means the same thing as a score there.
Do I need to be fast to play?
No. All three start slow and speed up only as you succeed: the level rises every four clean hits and never drops back, so a game meets you where you are and ends when you stop keeping up. What a round tells you is where that point is today, which is a more useful thing to know than a score.
Are game scores saved?
On this device, always. On the leaderboard, only if you have signed in and chosen a name — and a leaderboard name is never your email address.
What will I actually be typing in Arabic?
64 of the most common words in Arabic, drawn at random. They use 31 distinct characters between them and average 3.5 written units each, with the longest running to about 7. Short, frequent words are used on purpose: they are the ones your hands will meet most often outside a lesson, so the practice transfers.
Is Arabic hard to type?
Harder than a one-key-one-letter language, and for a specific reason rather than a vague one: marks combine, so a written unit takes several presses in a fixed order. The bank here averages 3.5 units per word with a fairly compact inventory of 31 characters across the practice bank. The keystroke count is higher than the visible length suggests, which is what makes early progress feel slower than it is.
Do I need an account, and is it free?
No account, no payment, no trial. Progress is stored in this browser, which is enough until you want it on a second device or on a leaderboard — that is the only thing an account buys, and it is optional.
Also in Arabic: lessons and the speed test.
Other languages written in Arabic: Kurdish (Sorani), Pashto, Persian (Farsi), Urdu.
Other languages whose letters combine as you type: Assamese, Bengali. Or browse all 86 by writing system.
Further reading
- Typing the Arabic script: one alphabet, five keyboardsOne script, five layouts. What Persian, Urdu, Pashto and Kurdish each change, why a letter changes shape after you type it, and which of it transfers.
- Typing in a second scriptIf you already touch type, your hands transfer completely and your recall does not. What that gap feels like, why it closes, and how to shorten it.
- What touch typing isTouch typing means typing without looking, using all ten fingers from a fixed home position. What it is, why it works, and what it is not.