Kilo Lingo

(kā fēi) - coffee in Mandarin

fēi

Traditional: 咖啡

Line drawing of 咖啡
Coloured illustration of 咖啡
HSK 3
#786 of 5,000 Core 1000

Translation

coffee

Word origin

咖啡 means coffee and is a phonetic loan from European 'coffee'. Both characters take the 口 'mouth' radical to mark the syllables as sound transcription, with 加 (jiā) and 非 (fēi) supplying the phonetics.

Origin
loanword
Root
口 (mouth radical) + 加/非 (phonetics) transcribing 'coffee'
English cognates
coffee

Stroke order

Stroke order for 咖

Stroke order for 啡

Examples

Would you like some coffee?

I drink coffee every morning.

I drink coffee every morning.

The coffee here is very bitter.

咖啡 (kā fēi) means coffee. It is used as a noun in everyday Mandarin speech.

Used in

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This word is part of lesson 16.