tilifoun تليفون

Tunisian Derja · noun

“tilifoun” (تليفون) is a noun in Tunisian Derja meaning telephone.

Meanings

1. telephone
2. phone call

Usage

Adapted loanword from French, in general use for the telephone, both landline and mobile. It takes possessive suffixes: "tilifouni", my phone. You say "3ayyetli fit-tilifoun" for "call me on the phone" and "3malt tilifoun" for "I made a phone call". For a mobile, "portable" is also heard, and among young people "tilifoun" alone is enough. The plural is tilifounet. The word is neutral and used in all registers. The Latin spelling varies a lot online: tilifoun, telifoun, tlifoun.

Example

How to write it in Latin letters

In Arabizi, Darija written in Latin letters, you will find “tilifoun” but also “telifoun”, “tlifoun”, “tilifone” and “tilifouen”. No spelling is official: people write the sounds as they hear them.

Type “tilifoun” on the Arabic keyboard

In Moroccan Darija

Spelt the same way in Arabic, the word also exists in Moroccan Darija, where it means “phone, mobile phone”: tilifon in Moroccan.