التليفون دهبي.

In Egyptian Arabic, the present-tense verb to be is usually not said.

So التليفون دهبي is literally the phone golden, but it naturally means The phone is golden.

You only use a verb like كان when you move out of the present:

• التليفون كان دهبي = The phone was golden
• التليفون هيبقى دهبي = The phone will be golden

Because Arabic adjectives normally come after the noun, unlike in English.

So:

• تليفون دهبي = a golden phone

And in a full sentence like this, the description also comes after the subject:

• التليفون دهبي = The phone is golden

So the word order is very normal for Arabic.

Because this is a full sentence, not just a noun phrase.

• التليفون is the subject: the phone
• دهبي is the predicate: golden

In Arabic, when an adjective is being used as the predicate of a sentence, it stays indefinite.

Compare these three:

• تليفون دهبي = a golden phone
• التليفون دهبي = the phone is golden
• التليفون الدهبي = the golden phone

That middle one is your sentence.

A rough Egyptian pronunciation is:

et-telefōn dahabi
or
it-tilifōn dahabi

A few notes:

• ال is the word the
• Because ت is a sun letter, the l sound of ال disappears in pronunciation
• So التليفون is not pronounced el-telefōn; it sounds more like et-telefōn / it-tilifōn

And دهبي is roughly dahabi or dehabi, depending on the speaker.

Yes, دهبي is the Egyptian colloquial form.

In Modern Standard Arabic, you would normally see:

• ذهبي

Egyptian Arabic often changes the sound ذ to د, so ذهبي becomes دهبي in everyday speech and often in informal writing too.

So the sentence structure is normal Arabic, but the form دهبي is especially Egyptian.

Usually it means golden or gold-colored.

In everyday speech, دهبي is most often used for color or appearance, not necessarily the material itself.

If you want to make it clear that something is actually made of gold, you would often say:

• من دهب = made of gold

So:

• التليفون دهبي usually means the phone is golden in color or finish
• التليفون من دهب means the phone is made of gold

Because تليفون is grammatically masculine singular, so the adjective also stays masculine singular:

• تليفون دهبي

If the noun were feminine, the adjective would normally become feminine too:

• العربية دهبية = The car is golden

So the form of the adjective changes to match the noun.

To make it negative in Egyptian Arabic, use مش:

• التليفون مش دهبي = The phone is not golden

To turn it into a yes/no question, you can often just use the same words with question intonation:

• التليفون دهبي؟ = Is the phone golden?

You can also add هوّ at the beginning for extra emphasis:

• هوّ التليفون دهبي؟ = Is the phone golden?