cà phê

Vietnamese

Etymology

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 [A course in spoken Annamese] (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 [the phe tea] or tea [the Chinese 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 cà was put forth by Emeneau (1951: 4, 158), who tentatively proposed that it was due to association with cà (“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

cà phê • (咖啡)

  1. coffee
    cà phê có liền ― instant coffee
    cà phê dùng ngay ― instant coffee
    cà phê nồi ― coffee pot
    máy xay cà phê ― coffee grinder
    tiệm cà phê ― café

Derived terms
  • Cà Phê Cái Đã (“'But first, coffee' A popular term with Vietnamese youth expressing the need to first have a coffee before doing even the most menial of tasks.”)
  • cà phê đá (“iced black coffee”)
  • cà phê đen (“black coffee”)
  • cà phê phin (“Vietnamese coffee filter/percolator”)
  • cà phê sữa đá (“iced coffee with milk”)
  • cà phê sữa (“coffee with milk”)
  • cà phê trứng (“egg coffee”)
  • quán cà phê (“coffee shop; coffee bar; coffee house; café”)

References
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