Lexis: more exotic loanwords & related issues
What
happens when a word
·
comes
from an unrelated and unfamiliar language
·
is
borrowed orally
o the case of coffee
(with thanks to student Z.P.)
Coffee seems to have come from the
Turkish pronunciation kahveh of the Arabic word qahwah, the
latter
·
denoting
the drink, not the plant (bunn ‘berry, bean’)
·
originally
meaning ‘wine’
·
perhaps
referring to a place where the coffee plant grows, Kaffa, in Ethiopia
There
are different European forms
·
Italian
caffè, French, Spanish, Portuguese cafē, German kaffee,
etc.
·
Dutch
koffie, earlier German coffee, koffee
And
many different spellings
·
caoua,
cahve, cahu, etc.
·
coffa,
caffa, capha
·
caphe,
cauphe, cophie, etc.
o oral borrowing
o from an unrelated and
unfamiliar source language
§
OED
will subclassify forms with Greek letters: ‘alpha’, ‘beta’, ‘gamma’ etc.
Word
comes into English (and all European languages) around 1600
Earliest
citations in travel literature, e.g.
· 1598 Linschoten’s
Trav. The Turkes holde almost the same manner of drinking of their Chaoua,
which they make of a certaine fruit by the Egyptians called Bon or Ban
· 1601 W. Parry Sherley’s
Trav. A certain Liquor which they call Coffe … which will soon intoxicate
the brain.
· 1603-30 Capt.
Smith Trav. & Adv. Their best drinke is Coffa of a graine they call
Coava
o definitions and descriptions
signal the word’s unfamiliarity
Mid-17th
century citations chart its introduction to England
· 1636 Evelyn, Memoirs
There came in my time [1636] to the College, one Nathaniel Conopios, out of
Greece. He was the first I ever saw drink coffee; which custom came not into
England till thirty years after.
Quickly
integrated: by the 1660s it’s familiar (“our Cophee”)
· 1664 Evelyn, Sylva
Which might yet be drank daily as our Cophee is
· 1665 G. Harvey,
Advice agst. Plague Coffee is recommended against the Contagion
Helpful
citations under coffee-house: 1650 or before?
1615 G. SANDYS
Trav. I. 66 Coffa-houses [in Constantinople]..There sit they
chatting most of the day, and sippe of a drinke called Coffa.
1656 BLOUNT
Glossogr., Cauphe-house, a Tavern or Inn where they sel Cauphe.
1664 PEPYS
Diary 24 Nov., To a coffee-house, to drink jocolatte.
a1672 WOOD
Life (1848) 48 This yeare [1650] Jacob a Jew opened a coffey house at
the Angel in the parish of S. Peter in the east, Oxon.
And
by the next century it’s a familiar point of reference
· 1702 W.J.
Bruyn’s Voy. Levant. The most usual
Liquor … Kahue, which we call Coffee
o unaware that the words are
related?
Integration
·
compounds:
coffee berries, coffee plantation
·
compounds
for coffee paraphernalia: coffee dish, coffee mill (C17th), coffee
cup (C18th)
·
metonym:
coffee ‘light meal at which coffee is taken’ (c18th) (cf tea)