Symbols
64Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Alphabet
Arabic order, read right to left in text. Hamza forms and ة sit with the letter they are written on; the g letters ڭ and ݣ sit next to ق, the letter whose q Hassaniya says as g.
Vowel marks
Rarely written in everyday Hassaniya; used in teaching and dictionaries. Each sits on the letter before it.
Punctuation
The Arabic comma, semicolon and question mark face right to left; « » are the usual quotation marks.
Number letters (Arabizi)
Digits that stand for Arabic sounds when Hassaniya is typed in Latin letters.
Where it's spoken
The ouguiya, dirham and dinar have no Unicode signs: write UM, DH or DA.
Tea, tent and poetry
Emoji of the Saharan life the language grew up in.
On the map
Loading…
The Hassaniya Arabic alphabet: Arabic letters plus a g
Hassaniya (also spelled Hassaniyya, and called klam el-bidhan, the speech of the Moors, by many of its speakers) is the Arabic of the western Sahara: Mauritania, Western Sahara, southern Morocco, south-western Algeria and northern Mali. Its Arabic-script spelling has no single standard across countries. Senegal adopted an official Latin orthography for Hassaniya in 2005; elsewhere, it is commonly written with the Arabic alphabet from right to left, using the same 28 base letters as Modern Standard Arabic, the form taught in school and printed in newspapers: ا ب ت ث ج ح خ د ذ ر ز س ش ص ض ط ظ ع غ ف ق ك ل م ن ه و ي. CLDR keeps no letter list of its own for Hassaniya, so this page follows that standard alphabet and adds only what Hassaniya writers put on top of it.
In many words, Hassaniya pronounces Standard Arabic qaf as g: قال (qāla, he said) is gāl. Arabic-script spelling usually retains ق; writers who mark the local pronunciation may use extra letters such as ڭ or ݣ, but there is no standardized added letter.
Hassaniya also keeps sounds that many city dialects of the Maghreb have lost: the th of ث, the dh of ذ and the emphatic ظ are still said, not turned into t and d, so those letters carry real weight when Hassaniya is written in Arabic script.
Arabic letters in Hassaniya: shapes, hamza, ة and vowel marks
Arabic letters join to their neighbours and change shape at the start, middle or end of a word, but each is still one character: you copy the stand-alone form shown here and the font joins it. Six letters never join to the letter after them: ا د ذ ر ز و.
Hamza ء is a glottal stop that sits on a seat: أ إ آ on alif, ؤ on waw, ئ on ya. Spoken Hassaniya drops many glottal stops, so hamzas turn up mostly in words borrowed from Standard Arabic. ة, ta marbuta, ends many feminine nouns, as in خيمة (khayma, tent), and ى, alif maqsura, appears at the end of a few words.
Vowel marks are rarely written in everyday text. Teachers and dictionaries use them: َ fatha (a), ُ damma (u), ِ kasra (i), ْ sukun (no vowel) and ّ shadda, which doubles a consonant. ً fathatan turns up in words like شكراً (thank you).
Hassaniya in Latin letters: 3, 7, 9 and French spellings
On phones and social media many young speakers type Hassaniya in Latin letters. They borrow the digits of the Arabic chat alphabet, or Arabizi, for sounds the Latin alphabet lacks: 3 for ع (ayn), 7 for ح (the hard h), 9 for ق (qaf) and 2 for the glottal stop ء. The digits were picked because they look like the letters: 3 is a mirrored ع, 7 resembles ح and 9 resembles ق. The g needs no trick at all: in Latin letters it is simply g.
The rest follows French habits, because French is widely used in writing in Mauritania: ch for ش, kh for خ, gh for غ and ou for the u sound. Some Mauritanian passport spellings show this convention: Ould (ولد, son of) and Mint (منت, daughter of), and a ف often written v, as in the family names Vall and Vadel, because many speakers voice it.
How to type Hassaniya Arabic letters
Windows: add an Arabic language under Settings › Time & language › Language & region; the Arabic (102) AZERTY keyboard lays Arabic over the French-style AZERTY keys common in Mauritania and the Maghreb, and Win Space switches between layouts. Standard Arabic layouts have no key for the g letters: in Word, type 06AD and press Alt X for ڭ, or 0763 then Alt X for ݣ.
Mac: add Arabic in System Settings › Keyboard › Input Sources; for ڭ and ݣ, add Unicode Hex Input and hold Option while typing 06AD or 0763. Phones: add an Arabic keyboard in Gboard or the iPhone keyboard settings and switch with the globe key; Arabizi needs no extra keyboard at all. HTML: ڭ for ڭ and ݣ for ݣ. Or simply tap any letter on this page to copy it.
Where Hassaniya Arabic is spoken
Hassaniya takes its name from the Beni Hassan, Bedouin Arab tribes who moved into the western Sahara in the late Middle Ages and, over the following centuries, made their Arabic the common language of the region, in place of the Berber language Zenaga, which survives today in a small community in south-western Mauritania. Many Zenaga words live on in Hassaniya.
CLDR's model estimates about 9 million functional Hassaniya users in all, with roughly 3.8 million in Mauritania , where Hassaniya is the everyday language of most of the country, and about 300,000 in Morocco . Its figure for Algeria , about 5 million, is the largest, but estimates vary widely between sources; Hassaniya's home ground there is the far south-west around Tindouf, including the Sahrawi refugee camps. It is the language of the Sahrawis of Western Sahara and of cities such as Laayoune and Dakhla, and it is spoken by Arab communities of northern Mali around Timbuktu.
Hassaniya is one of Mali's official languages under the 2023 constitution. Mauritania's official language is Standard Arabic, and Morocco's 2011 constitution names Hassani culture as part of the country's identity. Hassaniya belongs to the Maghrebi Arabic family, so see the Moroccan Arabic, Algerian Arabic and Arabic collections, and the Mauritania, Western Sahara and Morocco collections for each country's emoji. Prices in Mauritania are in ouguiya, which has no Unicode sign: it is written UM or أوقية, MRU as the ISO code. The region writes its numbers with the digits 0–9, not the ٠١٢٣ used further east.
Tea, tents and poetry: the emoji of Hassaniya life
A few emoji belong to the language's own world. is atay (أتاي), green tea with mint and a lot of sugar, poured from high up into small glasses and served in three rounds; offering it is how a Hassaniya conversation starts. is the khayma, the nomad tent, and and the camels and dunes of the Sahara that much of the vocabulary grew up around.
Mauritania is often called the land of a million poets, and much of that poetry is in Hassaniya, sung by griot musicians with the tidinit lute and the women's harp, the ardin, for which stands well. recalls the manuscript libraries of Chinguetti and Ouadane.
How to use them
5 situationsClick to copyHassaniya Arabic Alphabet combos
12Worth knowing
- Mauritanian names in Latin letters often write ف as v, because many Hassaniya speakers voice it: the family name Vadel is the Arabic name Fadel, spelled the way it sounds in Nouakchott.
- In many words Hassaniya says g where Standard Arabic says q, so the same word may be spelled in more than one way in Arabic script: قال, or with an added g letter as ڭال or ݣال, all read gāl, he said.
- Mauritania's Qur'an schools, the mahadras, still teach on wooden boards in the Maghrebi hand, which dots two letters differently from the Arab east: fa with one dot below and qaf with one dot above.
- Morocco's 2011 constitution names Hassani culture as part of Moroccan identity, next to its Arab, Amazigh and Saharan roots.
Questions people ask
7What is Hassaniya Arabic?
The variety of Arabic spoken in the western Sahara: Mauritania, Western Sahara, southern Morocco, south-western Algeria and northern Mali. It is named after the Beni Hassan, Bedouin Arab tribes who spread it there, and it has many words from the Berber language Zenaga.
What alphabet does Hassaniya Arabic use?
Hassaniya is commonly written in the Arabic alphabet from right to left; qaf ق is usually retained for g, though some writers use ڭ or ݣ informally. Senegal adopted an official Latin orthography in 2005, while Arabic-script spelling is not standardized; online, many people type Hassaniya in Latin letters with digits such as 3, 7 and 9 for ع ح ق.
How do you write g in Hassaniya?
With ڭ , as in ڭال (gāl, he said), or its look-alike ݣ . Many writers just keep ق and read it as g. Copy either letter from this page, or in Word type 06AD then Alt X.
Hassaniya Arabic vs Darija: what is the difference?
Both are Maghrebi Arabic, but Moroccan Darija grew up in the cities and farmland of Morocco, while Hassaniya is the Bedouin Arabic of the Sahara. Hassaniya says g for q, keeps the th and dh sounds of ث and ذ, and has its own vocabulary, including many Zenaga Berber words, so speakers of the two understand each other only in part.
Where is Hassaniya Arabic spoken?
Mainly in Mauritania, where most people speak it every day, in Western Sahara and southern Morocco, in south-western Algeria around Tindouf, and among Arab communities of northern Mali. CLDR's model estimates about 9 million functional Hassaniya users, while speaker estimates vary widely between sources.
How do you say hello in Hassaniya?
With السلام عليكم (as-salamu alaykum), followed by إيش حالك؟ (ish halak?, how are you?). The usual answer is لاباس، الحمد لله (labas, el hamdu lillah, fine, thank God).
What does Hassaniya mean?
It means the language of the Hassan: the Beni Hassan, the Arab tribes whose dialect became the common language of the western Sahara. Its speakers often call it simply klam el-bidhan, the speech of the Moors.
