Talk:咖啡

Taiwanese Min Nan ka-pi, Taiwanese Hakka kâ-pî, Teochew gia¹ hui¹ and Min Dong gă-pĭ

They look like literal readings of the characters rather than borrowed pronunciations (as does Wu ka¹ fi). Wyang (talk) 05:32, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Where should we put them? — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 05:34, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I think adding a note underneath the table would be a good way of explaining this. Wyang (talk) 05:39, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

I forgot the aspiration in the Shanghainese reading when I put it in a while back. I think it's from English (as suggested in 上海話大詞典). — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 06:00, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I did some research on this word, and it seems the reality may be much more complicated than this. The earliest mention of any variant of this word seems to be in the first half of the 19th century.

「架非」 in 《美理哥國誌略》, by 裨治文 (Elijah Coleman Bridgman), in 1838:

飲食則每日三餐，早膳或飯或麵飽（包）或豬、羊、燒、烚不等，亦有牛奶、雞蛋、牛油、茶、架非。

According to 第19章 《美理哥合省国志略》：第一本中文美国史著作（下）:

从现有的资料看，最早解释咖啡的可能就是裨治文。后来，魏源在《海国图志》中把“架非”转抄为“架菲”，《小方壶斋舆地丛钞》中的《美理哥国志略》几乎完全抄录《海国图志》，所以仍为“架菲”。所以时人以为“架菲”一词第一次出现于1838年的《美理哥国志略》。

「架菲」 in 《海國圖志/卷059》, by 魏源, in 1843:

飲食則每日三餐，早膳或飯，或麵，及肉，亦有牛奶、雞蛋、牛油、茶、架菲〈（架菲者，將青豆炒焦，研末，水煎或白滾水衝隔渣）〉，自七點鐘至十點，各隨其便。惟不多食，名曰早餐。

「加菲」 in 《海國圖志/卷051》:

民日三餐，早飲茶加菲等暨麵包餅餌，牛乳油，午後大餐牛羊雞豚魚菜，惟荷蘭薯，甲乎各國。

「加非」 in 《每月統紀傳》 (Eastern Western Monthly Magazine), in 1833–1838:

三大州之至盛為呀瓦，米勝用，胡椒、燕窩、翠羽、白糖、綿花、加非、蘇木、木頭等貨，各樣果實，蕉子、椰子、檳榔、石榴、柚子、波蘿、柑子、芒果、橙橘等，無所不備。恨水多鱷魚，地有火山，頻數地震，火出燒樹屋，居者皆以炎暑為患。

「咖啡」 in 《植物學》 (Botany), by 韋廉臣 (Alexander Williamson), in 1859 (picture, pg. 12, on left):

自十五度至三十四度熱漸殺草木漸小而疎則有波蘿樹甘蔗咖啡大棗木棉香椽佛手橄欖桂無花果葡萄杏梅桃李胡桃橘柚扁柏机木水浮木生焉

「咖啡」 in Robert Morrison's A Dictionary of the Chinese Language, in 1865 (picture):

咖: This character is in vulgar use. 咖啡 Këa fei coffee. 咖喇吧 Këa la pa, vulgar name given to Java.

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This indicates the pronunciation of 「咖啡」 in Mandarin (lower Yangtze koiné) at the time was possibly equivalent to modern jia fei.

Some publications:

• 马礼逊辞典中的新词语（续）
• The Formation of Modern Chinese Lexicon and Its Evolution Toward a National Language: The Period from 1840 to 1898 (see below)

kafei 咖啡, coffee, disyllable, polysyllabic morpheme, phonemic loan, noun. Already present in Morrison's Dictionary of 1815 (Dictionary: II, 1, 504). The term jiafei 架菲 was used by Bridgman in 1838 (Meiligeguo zhilüe: f. 15v). The writing form 架非 can be found in 1844 in Haiguo tuzhi: 2941. Xu Jiyu, 1850 (Yinghuan zhilüe: juan 7, f. 51v), Zhang Deyi, 1866 (Hanghai shuqi: 456) and Yan Fu, 1901-1902 (Yuanfu: 469) used 加非. According to Shao Rongfen (Ping wailaici yanjiu: 347), the current writing form kafei 咖啡 has only been attested since 1879.

• 19世纪传教士编粤语文献音译词用字探析

Some Japanese discussions:

• 「珈琲」の語源は？隣国の言語と似ている理由
• 誰が「珈琲」をつくったのか？#珈琲咖啡探索隊 （ダイジェスト版）
• #珈琲咖啡探索隊「珈琲」と「咖啡」の差は19世紀以前のどこで生まれたか？ 日本語と漢語のそれぞれの展開をdigる

Wyang (talk) 07:55, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Also see Vietnamese cà phê. Would be interested to know if there is a relationship between the similar low-high tonal patterns in Vietnamese and Cantonese. Wyang (talk) 00:35, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

@Wyang: I suspect it has to do with how stress is interpreted into tones. I'd say in Cantonese English or loanwords from English, stressed syllables are generally interpreted as high tones. Since French words always stress the final syllable, the 啡 has a high tone. This paper might be interesting. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 01:44, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

@Justinrleung Thanks for the link, very interesting read indeed. It confirmed and explained many of the existing impressions as well. The final stress pattern in French could explain the tones in Cantonese; what I found interesting yet is that stress does not seem to be usually realised via the form of pitch in this French word- for example, audios on café and on Forvo#fr give me a tonal impression more like H-L/M, rather than L-H. Whether the tone difference could be related to the a loudness contrast between the syllables, or pitch tendency in the variety of French spoken near Cantonese at the time- I'm not sure. Tried to search for articles on adaptations of French loanwords in Cantonese online, but they seem to be lacking.

On the other hand, Vietnamese cà phê looks like it has a slightly more convoluted history (see #Etymology there), potentially contaminated by trà. Though there are non-level tone syllables used to transcribe loanwords in Vietnamese (for which xì-căng-đan comes to mind), the 'default' tone for non-checked syllables in loanwords is usually the flat ngang tone, so cà phê is more of a rare case. Regardless though, these two Vietnamese and Cantonese words can sound very much alike to me, and audios on Forvo (Cantonese and Vietnamese) seem to confirm as well. The use of the Southernism trà in trà phê is noteworthy; the south was also where a lot of the Cantonese-speaking migrants were at the time. Wyang (talk) 03:55, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

RFV discussion: October 2019–February 2021

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咖啡

Vietnamese. — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 21:06, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

RFV-deleted — surjection ⟨??⟩ 18:18, 8 February 2021 (UTC)