Why is Coffee saud with a ‘hi’

5 comments

1. It’s a Japanese word, not an English one. That goes for every loan word, so get used to saying them *correctly* in Japanese.

2. Japanese doesn’t really have an F sound. Historically, the H sounds were sorta a mix of H and F, so the best approximation at the time of coffee’s introduction to Japan was コーヒー.

   Similarly, train platforms are called ホーム as an abbreviation of プラットホーム (Platform).

   Nowadays you’ll find フ with a small vowel to denote an F sound for foreign words, like in フィ.

3. Why do we call it Japan / Japanese instead of its correct pronunciation?

   It’s a different language with different words.

4. Im also a learner so someone chime in if this isnt 100% but the F in フ isnt a hard F like in english, its a lower tone than the “huu” sounds that follows.. the F is almost breathy in a sense.. so your example コフイ sounds more like “co-f’huu-ee” i believe.. which seems further a stretch than コ－ヒ－ imo..

5. ファ, フィ, フェ, フォ, as well as a bunch of similar katakana combinations, are relatively recent additions to the Japanese language that were developed as a result of increasing globalization for the purpose of transcribing primarily English loan words.

   You are making the understandable assumption that コーヒー is borrowed from the English word “coffee”. It is actually derived from the Dutch *koffie*, and was introduced into the Japanese language centuries ago, probably as early as the 17th century.

   So the word has simply been in the Japanese language for longer than the katakana spellings I listed earlier. At that time, transcriptions had to happen with the kana that were available in the language, and ヒ was the closest to *fi*.

   By the way, this is the result of some brief internet “research” I did just now. So if anything I said is wrong, please correct me.