cà phê

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Vietnamese

 cà phê on Vietnamese Wikipedia

Etymology

This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium.
Particularly: “It is attested as cà phe in the Dictionarium Anamitico-Latinum (1838), sourced from a dictionary by Pigneau (1773). I'm not sure how much that would affect the etymologizing below, which is based on sources and works quite a bit later.”

Adapted from an earlier form trà phê (coffee) (Martini, 1958; Michaud et al., 2015), as attested in scholar Pétrus Ky's Cours d'annamite parlé (1894). This is a phono-semantic matching of French café (coffee), matching the first syllable with the existing Sino-Vietnamese word trà (tea); literally, this name could be interpreted as: “a kind of tea with the phê attribute” (whatever that attribute may mean).

Naming coffee as a type of tea acclimatises the new beverage, introducing it into a set that already included trà tàu (Chinese tea (black tea)), trà Huế (Annamese tea (green tea)), trà hoa (camellia tea), trà rừng (three-seeded mercury (herbal) tea), and so on (Martini, 1958; Michaud et al., 2015). An example is found in Cours d'annamite parlé:

anh uống trà-phe hay-là trà-tàu
Do you drink coffee or tea ?

Later on, the form trà phê underwent re-foreignisation, influenced by French-speaking Vietnamese who pronounce French café as ‹ca phê› (Michaud et al., 2015). A hybrid form of cà phê emerged as a consequence, retaining the original /k/ in the donor language and the tone of trà, and this form eventually became the standard (Nguyễn, 1999).

An alternative theory for the unexpected tone on was put forth by Emeneau (1951: 4, 158), who tentatively proposed that it was due to association with (eggplant), in a fashion similar to cà rốt (carrot). However, this is now deemed to be very unlikely.

Compare phê (high; intoxicated), as well as Cantonese 咖啡 (gaa3 fe1, also with a lower tone on the first syllable).

Pronunciation

Cà phê đen.

Noun

phê (咖啡)

  1. coffee
    cà phê có liềninstant coffee
    cà phê dùng ngayinstant coffee
    cà phê hòa tan - instant coffee
    cà phê nồicoffee pot
    máy xay cà phêcoffee grinder
    tiệm cà phêcafé

Derived terms

References