Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Sorry, it's "caffè"

I had a light breakfast here at the Liberty Caffé which is part of the country club of the city of Coral Gables. They say it has the appeal of an European-style café, thus its strange way of spelling the word coffee. OK.. so I said to myself "What's going on here? What's in this name: caffé? It's supposed to be European, but it's not French, which then it should be "café," nor is it Italian where it should have been "caffè."

A quick look into the etymology of this world famous brew from the coffee bean taught me that:

The English words coffee and café both descend from the continental European translingual word root /kafe/, which appears in many European languages with various naturalized spellings, including Italian (caffè); Portuguese, Spanish, and French (café); German (Kaffee); Polish (kawa); Ukrainian (кава, 'kava') and many others. I couldn't find a country that says "Caffé." Only in the City Beautiful here!

Well, it has an eatable croissan'Wich, a bit on the dry side, but definitely eatable. Please do not ask me to look into the strange way that a French croissant somehow turned into a sandwich! That happened in 1983.
Café

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