Why so similar? 🤯

[b]English[/b]: coffee
[b]German[/b]: Kaffee
[b]French[/b]: café
[b]Italian[/b]: caffè
[b]Spanish[/b]: café
[b]Portuguese[/b]: café
[b]Romanian[/b]: cafea
[b]Dutch[/b]: koffie
[b]Icelandic[/b]: kaffi
[b]Norwegian[/b]: kaffe
[b]Swedish[/b]: kaffe

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ElwoodBlues · M Best Comment

Similar because a single origin (Arabic) that then reached European cultures starting in the 1500s and spreading in the 1600s.

[quote] From Dutch koffie (“coffee”), from Italian caffè (“coffee”), from Ottoman Turkish قهوه (kahve, “coffee”), from Arabic قَهْوَة (qahwa, “coffee, a brew”).[1][2] The Arabic word originally referred to wine, a drink which was traditionally mixed and served hot in a similar manner. In Arabic "to brew" utilizes the same triliteral root as wine and intoxicant; see خ م ر (ḵ-m-r) "to cover over", presumably with hot water. Other sources instead claim it traces back to the name of the Kaffa region of Ethiopia, which is an Omotic word. Doublet of café and caffè and cognate with the words for "coffee" in other major European languages, most of which are derived from the Turkish and Italian words.[2] [/quote]
[b]https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coffee[/b]

XenonRush · M

Excellent insight, sir!
@ElwoodBlues

ElwoodBlues · M

@XenonRush Thanks for BC!!

XenonRush · M

You are welcome, good sir!
@ElwoodBlues

Nanori · F

Farsi: qahveh

Irrelevant

Bye

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XenonRush · M

Can you write it in Japanese? 😌
@Nanori

Nanori · F

@XenonRush
コーヒー

Nanori · F

@XenonRush [quote]To someone who cannot read the script, Arabic and Persian look like the same language![/quote]
Both languages have similar alphabet except Persian have some more

BarbossasHusband · 36-40, M

In Norway we have two similar yet different written languages. The "official" one is bokmål, and they write "kaffe"
The other one is nynorsk (new norwegian. Mostly used on the west coast) and we write "kaffi" here.

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ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@BarbossasHusband Does anyone really speak nynorsk? Most people I know speak the dialect of the place they grew up in or, in the case of immigrants lived, while learning Norwegian.

My children hated having nynorsk lessons because pretty much no one living around Oslo fjord speaks and certainly doesn't write, anything like it. When a family from rural Trøndelag moved in the class could hardly understand a word that the new student said, nynorsk was no help at all.

BarbossasHusband · 36-40, M

@ninalanyon it's all dialect, you're right. But some sound more like nynorsk than others. Bergen and Hardanger for example.

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

@BarbossasHusband Bergensk only has common gender and neuter unlike both bokmål and nynorsk which have masculine, feminine, and neuter. Gender is one of the hardest things for me to get right when speaking Norwegian, having only two would be easier!

GJOFJ3 · 61-69, M

It’s the universal elixir of the gods

XenonRush · M

How much coffee do you drink per day?
@GJOFJ3

ninalanyon · 61-69, T

Are there any languages where the word for coffee is unrelated to the Arabic original?

Rilynn

Oh we ain't.

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