COFFEE IN ALL THE LANGUAGES OF THE WORLD

Caffè in Italian, coffee in English, café in French and Spanish, kaffee in German. They all sound a lot alike. And guess what? Coffee sounds pretty similar in practically every language in the world!
From Finland to China, from Greece to Iceland, from Japan to Turkey, Russia and South Africa, we all use similar words for the beverage. Don’t believe it? Just take a look:

Afrikaans: Koffie
Albanian: Kafe
Bengalese: Kophi
Burman: Gra-pi
Bosnian: Kafa
Bulgarian: Kафе
Cambodian: Gafé
Cantonese: Gafe
Catalan: Cafè
Czech: Káva
Chichewa: Khofi
Singalese: Kopi
Korean: Keopi
Croatian: Kafa
Danish: Kaffe
Esperanto: Kafejo
Estonian: Kohv
Finnish: Kahvi
French: Café
Welsh: Coffi
Japanese: Kafee
Greek: Kαφέ
Hausa: Kofi
Hmong: Kas fes
Hindi: Kaafii
Indonesian: Kopi
Icelandic: Kaffi
Italian: Caffè
Lao: Gahfeh
Malaysian: Kopi
Mandarin: Kafei
Maori: Kawhe
Norwegian: Kafè
Dutch: Koffie
Persian: Ghahve
Polish: Kawa
Portuguese: Cafè
Romanian: Cafea
Russian: Kофе
Serbian: Kafa
Slovakian: Káva
Slovenian: Kava
Spanish: Café
Swedish: Kaffe
Swahili: Kahawa
German: kaffee
Tagalog: Kapè
Tamil: Kaapi
Thai: Gahfaa
Turkish: Kahve
Hungarian: Kávé
Even the Klingon language in Star Trek has a similar word for coffee: /qa’vIn/.
But why? There is a very good reason for this: all these similar words for coffee, in different languages in countries located far apart, come from a single ancient word.
This is most likely the Arabic word qahwa, meaning “stimulant”, used around the year 1000 by Arabic merchants to describe the beverage extracted from coffee beans which they imported from their trips to Africa. The same word is now Arabic for coffee.
Some, however, believe that the common root that gave rise to the word for coffee in all the world’s languages comes from Caffa, the name of the peninsula in what is now Ethiopia where the coffee plant grew wild in huge quantities.
Who knows? In any case, wherever in the world you may travel, you can be confident that if you say something that sounds like “coffee”, anybody will understand that you want to order your favourite beverage. It may be easy to get across the idea that you want coffee; but as for explaining HOW you want your coffee – well, that’s a little tougher!