Usage
Online communications, such as IRC, bulletin board systems, and blogs, are often run on systems or over protocols which don't support codepages or alternate character sets. This system has gained common use and can be seen even in domain names such as Qal3ah.
It is most commonly used by youths in the Arab world in very informal settings, for example communicating with friends or other youths. The Arabic Chat Alphabet is never used in formal settings and is rarely, if ever, used for long communications. The length of any single communication in ACA rarely ever exceeds more than a few sentences at a time.
Even though the Arabic language is well integrated with Windows XP and Mac OS X, people still use it in Arabic forums and instant Messaging programs such as Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger because they don't always have Arabic keyboards. Also, some people are not capable of using an Arabic keyboard as it is much more complicated than the English one.
Arabish is used on many public advertisements by large multinationals. Because of its widespread use, large players in the online industry like Google and Microsoft introduced tools that convert text written in Arabish to Arabic.
Read more about this topic: Arabic Chat Alphabet
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