Caffee looks pretty much like coffee. But is Caffee a valid variant of the word coffee? And which other spelling is not a spelling mistake or typo?
We can conclude: Coffee is coffee. And only in this spelling is coffee really also coffee, the umbrella term for the beloved beverage. Perhaps it's due to too little coffee or caffeine that typos regularly creep into the word coffee. Although caffeine is really only written with one "e" and coffee always with two.
Kaffe, Caffee, Cafee or Kafi? Close doesn't usually count. We probably owe the most beautiful variants to other languages. So let's take a closer look at the term and consult the Duden and dictionary.
Spelling mistake or not entirely wrong?
Coffee in German stands for both the beverage and coffee in bean form. The Duden also summarizes this. In addition to coffee beans, it also names some coffee beverages such as espresso or mocha as a synonym. However, this is not particularly helpful because these are technically subgroups and cannot be used as equivalents. Röstkaffee can also be used synonymously in the German-speaking region.
Coffee is the core of the fruit of the coffee plant, which is processed and dried in the country of origin and roasted and brewed before consumption. The scientific and Latin name is Coffea, which gives us one origin for the frequently used "C" in coffee in other languages.
Coffea Arabica and Coffea Canephora are species. Coffea Canephora var. Robusta describes the variety Robusta.
Caffè, Café and Coffeeshop
Caffè is the Italian translation of the word coffee. Since in Italy coffee is the epitome of culture and everyday life, as a fixed part of meeting, break and chat, many an Italian has the feeling that he invented coffee. By the way, Caffè in Italy is equivalent to what we call espresso in Switzerland, Germany and Austria. If you order a Caffè in Italy, you shouldn't expect a long and large drink here, but rather the thick cream in the small cup.
Café on the other hand is the French variant of the word, which over time has also established itself in the German-speaking world as a synonym for the coffeehouse or coffee room or coffee tavern. We like the "Café" variant for coffeehouse, as it was a meeting place for poets and thinkers in France and a breeding ground for the French Revolution.
Coffee on the other hand is the English variant. Although you don't get coffee in every country in a Coffeeshop. In the Netherlands, you could stumble into a coffeeshop and find a legal sales outlet for soft drugs. Some may argue at this point that coffee, thanks to the alkaloid caffeine, is nothing else.
Colloquial language, dialect and real errors
You can speak as you like, as is well known. Especially since dialects and local languages have their own rules. That's why "Kafi" or "Kaffi" in Switzerland is absolutely correct and the North German doesn't do anything wrong with "Kafe" either. By the way, this is not far from the Turkish kahve, which was etymologically a pathfinder for the development of the term. The Ottoman Empire once distributed coffee throughout the world via its trade routes.
The starting point for this journey was the region "Kaffa" in the southwest Äthiopiens, allegedly the origin region of all coffee plants. This closes the circle much more beautifully in terms of language than with Sudan, where coffee plants probably really first grew.
