
Re: Need to know what the sound 3 and 7 and 2 represent when writing Arabic words in English alphabe
First, the numbers are only used in informal Arabic (usually for chatting on the Web).
If you know how the name "Ali" is pronounced in Arabic, the first letter's pronunciation is usually refered to as "3". In Arabic, it's "?" (ayen). In the IPA, it's called "voiced pharyngeal fricative". So it can be written as "3li".
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_pharyngeal_fricative
Also, "7" refers to the Arabic pronunciation of the "h" as in the name "Mohammed". It's "?" (ha'), and the sound is called "voiceless pharyngeal fricative". So we can write it as "Mo7ammad".
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_pharyngeal_fricative
In the word "su'al" (???? = question), the apostrophe (short stop) is usually replaced by "2", so we can say "su2al".