How to say "general store" in Arabic
LoanwordMeaninggeneral store
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
ḥānūtחאנות
حانوت
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
khanutخَانُوت
How the two words are related
Borrowed between the languages (or by both from a third).
Hebrew חנות and Arabic حانوت are the same word, both most likely carried in from Aramaic ḥănūtā, 'stall, booth'. حانوت reads as literary or old-fashioned in the Levant — where دكان, already in your deck, rules the street — but it's still the everyday word for a corner shop across the Maghreb.
Learn it
On the street
How people actually say it in the spoken dialects, where it differs from the standard word.
Egyptian · Cairo and the Nile Delta
A small shop in Cairo is a dukkān.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
In Darija ḥānūt is the everyday word for any shop, not an old-fashioned one.
In a phrase
a small shop
Plural
broken plural CawāCīC