The history of the coffee plant itself is pretty wild as it meandered its way across the world from East Africa to the Middle East to Europe and further on to the Americas & Asias. How to say coffee around the world?
Have you ever wondered how to say coffee in different languages? How to say coffee around the world? This is the tour around the world to learn how to say coffee in other languages. In English the word is coffee, which has its origins in the 16th-century. It derives from the Italian caffe, the Turkish kahve, and the Arabic qahwah. A few other languages the same word or a derivative:
Urdu – coffee
Welsh – coffi
In many languages throughout the world the word is pronounced in a very similar manner.
Afrikaans – koffie (pronounced coffee)
Dutch – koffie (pronounced coffee)
Esperanto – kafo
German – der Kaffee (pronounced kah-FEE; masculine; the “K” is capitalized because all German nouns are capitalized)
Finnish – kahvi
Hindi – kofi (pronounced KOH-fee)
Russian – kofe (pronounced koe-fee)
Café (pronounced ka-FEY) is used more widely than coffee and a variety of languages prefer it. Using café when traveling around the world is always good.
Italian – caffe
French – café
Spanish – el café
Catalan – cafe
Galician – café
Irish – caife
Portuguese – café
Romanian –cafea (pronounced café-ah)
Thai – kafea or ca-fea
Vietnamese – ca phe (pronounced ka FEY) or cafe
Many languages prefer to use a ‘k’ instead oc “c” in café, though the pronunciation rarely changes.
Albanian – kafe (pronounced KA-fey)
Basque – kafea or akeuta
Bulgarian –kafe
Creole – kafe
Danish: kaffe (pronounced kah-FEY)
Greek – kafés (pronounced ka-FACE)
Haitian Creole – kafe (pronounced kah-FEY)
Hebrew – ka-feh
Macedonian – kafe
Maltese – kafe
Norwegian – kaffe
Swedish – kaffe
Wolof – kafe
European languages use a softer ending, like ‘fee’ rather than ‘fay.‘
Icelandic – kaffii’
Latvian – kafija (pronounced ka-fee-ya)
Luxembourgish – Kaffi (like in German, all nouns are capitalized)
The languages of China and its neighbors are interesting.
Chinese (Cantonese) – ga feh
Chinese (Mandarin) – kafei
Taiwanese – ka fei
Ethiopian Amharic – buna (pronounced boona)
Ethiopian Semitic – bunna, buni, or bun
Arabic – qahioa, qahua or qahwe
‘Kava’ is a very popular word for coffee. Taking from the Arabic word qahwah, the Turkish word kahveh developed. This led to many of the Eastern European languages using the word kava for coffee.
Turkish – kahveh (pronounced kah-VEY)
Belarusian – kava
Croatian – kava
Czech – kava (pronounced kaava) or kafe
Lithuanian – kava
Polish – kawa (pronounced kava)
Slovakian – kava (pronounced kah-va)
Ukrainian – kavy or kava
Georgian – qava or chai
Hungarian – kavé (pronounced KAH-vey)
Serbian – kafa
Slovenian – kave
Yiddish – kave
As we move into the islands of the Pacific Ocean, there are more variations of kopi.
Filipino/Tagalog – kape
Hawaiian – kope
Indonesian – kopi
Korean – keopi or ko-pyi
Malay – kawah or koppi
Sinhalese (Sri Lanka) – kopi
Tamil (Sri Lanka) – kapi-kottai or kopi
There are even more ways to say coffee.You can see some similarities with the more popular derivatives, but they are unique.
Armenian – surch (pronounced suurch) or sourdj
Estonian – kohv
Japanese – koohii
Ojibwe – muckadaymashkikiwabu (literally mean “black medicine water” in the language of the Anishinabek Native Americans)
Persian – qéhvé
Swahili – kahawa
Zulu – ikhofi
The meaning of coffee is a drink made from the roasted and ground beanlike seeds of a tropical shrub, served hot or iced. The shrub of the bedstraw family that yields the coffee seeds, two of which are contained in each red berry. Native to the Old World tropics, most coffee is grown in tropical America.
