How to say "refrigerator, fridge" in Arabic
Shifted meaningMeaningrefrigerator, fridge
Arabic · Modern Standard Arabic
thallājaת'לאג'ה
ثلاجة
Hebrew · Modern Hebrew
mekarerمِكَارِر
How the two words are related
Same root as a Hebrew word, but the meaning drifted over the centuries.
Arabic root
ث-ل-جHebrew root
ש-ל-גث-ل-ج is letter-for-letter Hebrew ש-ל-ג 'snow' — the regular ש↔ث shift, the same one that links שלוש and thalātha, 'three'. Arabic thalj covers both snow and ice, and thallāja is simply 'the icebox' built from it. Modern Hebrew took a different route for its own fridge, coining מקרר from קר 'cold' instead — so the two languages' iceboxes share a root without sharing a word.
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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
ث becomes t and ج a hard g: tallāga.
Moroccan · Morocco — Casablanca, Rabat, Fes
ث becomes t: tellāja.
In a phrase
The milk is in the fridge.
Plural
sound feminine plural -āt