How to say "yogurt (drinkable)" in Arabic
Shifted meaningMeaningyogurt (drinkable)
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
labanלבן
لبن
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
lebenلِبِن
How the two words are related
Same root as a Hebrew word, but the meaning drifted over the centuries.
Arabic root
ل-ب-نHebrew root
ל-ב-ןSame root, ל-ב-ן / ل-ب-ن, 'white', pulling in different directions. Hebrew's native use stayed the color adjective, לבן, 'white'; Arabic laban narrowed to name the product itself, 'the white one' — soured milk, yogurt, or in Egypt plain milk. Israeli grocery shelves now carry a soured-milk drink sold as לבן too — most likely a fresh, direct loan of the Arabic sense landing on an old Hebrew word.
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
Cairo's yogurt is zabādi — laban there means milk.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
Darija's lben is buttermilk, the drink; set yogurt is dānūn (from the brand), and milk is ḥlīb.
In a phrase
a glass of laban (yogurt drink)