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Language and globalization

Thinking language with chocolate

By April 5, 202170 Comments9 min read13,747 views

 

Easter chocolates in the supermarket (Image credit: Wikimedia)

I’ve been thinking a lot about chocolate lately. Maybe because it is Easter and supermarkets in my part of the world are laden with chocolate products.

Chocolate is good to think with

Chocolate is good to think with – and I don’t mean just because chocolate is known to make our brains release endorphins, chemicals that make us feel good.

Chocolate is good to think with because it provides an easy-to-grasp explanation of the workings of global capitalism and the persistence of a colonial world order.

Global chocolate

The global chocolate industry is worth over 100 billion US$ per year. That wealth accumulation starts with the cultivation of the cacao bean and ends with the Easter egg melting in your mouth.

Cacao grows in tropical climates close to the equator. The world’s largest producer and exporter of cacao beans are two West African countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Together with Ecuador, Cameroon, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil, and Papua New Guinea they grow most of the world’s cacao.

Virgin forest cleared to make way for cacao plantation (Image credit: Peru Reports)

Cacao farming is a fast-growing plantation monoculture and a major factor in deforestation. 80% of Côte d’Ivoire’s rain forest, for instance, has in the past few decades been cut down to make way for cacao plantations.

Even though Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana dominate global cacao production, your Easter egg is not going to say “Made in Côte d’Ivoire” or “Made in Ghana.”

The label on your Easter egg is most likely to read “Made in Germany” because Germany is the world’s largest chocolate producer and exporter, followed by Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland.

Cacao – the raw product – is shipped from Africa to Europe to be transformed into the valuable chocolate.

The main consumers of chocolate are in North America and Europe. Over 10% of the world’s chocolate is eaten in USA alone, followed by Germany, France, United Kingdom, and Netherlands.

Per capita chocolate consumption in some of these countries is truly staggering. The average Swiss person, for instance, eats a whooping 8.8 kilos of chocolate per year. The thought alone is enough to give me constipation (although Australians are in no position to point fingers: each of us eats 4.9 kilos of chocolate per year).

The biggest multinational corporations running global chocolate are based in USA (Mars, Mondelēz, Hershey), Italy (Ferrero), Japan (Meiji, Ezaki Glico), Switzerland (Nestlé, Lindt & Sprüngli), UK (Pladis), and South Korea (Orion).

The back-breaking work of cacao production is done in the (supposedly former) colonies (Image credit: Insider)

The global division of labor could not be clearer: those who do the work and suffer the degradation of their environment are completely separated from those who grow rich on their exploitation and those who enjoy the fruits of their labor.

The chocolate profiteers and chocolate victims remain invisible

Despite the ubiquity of chocolate in supermarkets of the global north, few people know how the chocolate got there.

Most of us are ignorant of the money behind chocolate. Italy’s richest man, for instance, is Giovanni Ferrero, of the Nutella chocolate spread. Giovanni’s fortune is estimated to be 32 billion US$. By contrast, the average cacao farmer earns less than one US$ per day.

Now that we have the economics of global chocolate straight, let’s turn to language. The way we think about the word “chocolate” can tell us as much about language and culture contact, as it does about capitalism and colonialism.

“Chocolate” is a universal word

One of the most foundational ways to think about languages is to classify them into many different languages, each separate from the other.

From Afrikaans to Zulu, there are 6,000 languages or so. Each different from the other and each tied to a particular nation, ethnicity, or culture.

The word for “chocolate” and “cacao” in 56 languages (sourced from Google Translate; Latin alphabet used throughout for easy comparability)

Now consider the word for “chocolate” and “cacao” in those languages.

The table shows 56 translation equivalents of “chocolate” and “cacao”, all based on Google Translate, and all written in the Latin alphabet for easy comparability. One glance suffices to see that “chocolate” and “cacao” are essentially the same word in all these languages. There are pronunciation differences, for sure, but it is obvious that that is all there is.

Does it make sense to say that “cokollate” is an Albanian word, that “shukulata” is an Arabic word, that “tsokolate” is a Cebuano word, that “qiǎokèlì” is a Chinese word, that “chocolate” is an English word, that “Schokolade” is a German word, that “chokollis” is a Korean word, that “shoklat” is a Persian word, and that “ushokoledi” is a Zulu word?

Of course, each of these forms is adapted to the phonology of each language but it is equally clear that the most salient aspect of each of these words is not their difference but their similarity.

The German philological tradition has a term for these types of words that are pretty much identical across languages: wanderwort. Wanderwort literally means “wandering word” or “migrating word.” Such migrating words are “items that are borrowed from language to language, often through a long chain of intermediate languages” (Hock & Joseph, 2009, p. 484).

A textbook example for a wanderwort is “sugar” – another key ingredient in chocolate – which probably started out in Sanskrit as “śarkara” and moved westwards to become Persian “shakar,” Arabic “sukkar,” Greek “sákkharon,” and Spanish “azúcar.” The word did not stop with Spanish but hopped over to French “sucre”, Italian “zucchero”, German “Zucker”, and English “sugar.” The Greek version “sákkharon” took an additional route into Western Europe and also gave us English “saccharin”.

Migrating words – and there are many of them – remind us that the borders between languages are not fixed but highly porous. Language and culture contact is the norm, and has been the norm since time immemorial.

That is the first language lesson of chocolate.

Chocolate is a colonized word that has become universal

The overarching narrative of language contact and language spread in our time is of the triumph of English. Language – like everything else of value – supposedly emanates from the European centre to the rest of the world. Colonial languages are powerless and dying away in the face of the English juggernaut.

There is certainly some truth to this story but it is not the only story. An alternative story is encapsulated in the word for “chocolate”.

Precolonial Mesoamerican depiction of a marriage ceremony involving a drink of chocolate (Image credit: UC Davis Library)

The cacao bean has been cultivated in Mesoamerica and brewed into a chocolate drink for thousands of years. Accordingly, the words for “cacao” and “chocolate” have a long and varied history in the precolonial languages of the region (Dakin & Wichmann, 2000).

The migrating words for “cacao” and “chocolate” that we encounter today in (possibly?) all the world’s language is based on Nahuatl “kakáwa” and “čokola:tl.”

While colonial languages have certainly been spreading, individual words from colonized languages have been on the move, too. Some, like “kakáwa” and “čokola:tl” have made themselves at home universally.

Like “cacao” and “chocolate,” many universal words come from the world’s most threatened and minoritized languages.

Another iconic example is “kangaroo.” This universal word comes from Guugu Yimidhirr, an Australian language from Far North Queensland with less than 1,000 speakers.

The second language lesson of chocolate is that language spread is not a one-way street and colonized languages have also made their tracks around the globe.

Eurocentric etymologies

The Spanish conquest of the Americas brought the cacao bean and its preparation to the attention of Europeans.

The internet is full of claims that “Cortés was believed to have discovered chocolate during an expedition to the Americas” or that “Christopher Columbus discovered cacao beans after intercepting a trade ship on a journey to America and brought the beans back to Spain with him in 1502” (my emphasis).

Europeans have long lied to themselves about chocolate: this 17th century treatise depicts an Indian princess handing over chocolate to the higher-placed Poseidon, the ancient Greek god of the seas (Image credit: Internet Archive)

This is incorrect – like most “discoveries” of the colonial period and the so-called “Age of Discovery,” the existence of the cacao bean and its use in chocolate preparation was well-known to the Aztecs.

In today’s terms, what Cortés, Columbus, and all the other “discoverers” did might be called plagiarism or intellectual property theft.

Words like “cacao” and “chocolate” bear witness to that grand theft in the languages of the world.

Not surprisingly, the colonizers have tried to erase those linguistic tracks.

“Kangaroo” was for a long time thought to be “unknown” in any Australian language, and the idea was that Captain Cook and Joseph Banks somehow made up the word. Another apocryphal story had it that “kangaroo” actually means “I don’t know” in Guugu Yimidhirr. In this anecdote, local knowledge is completely erased while Cook and Banks come out as the heroic discoverers who made sense out of local ignorance.

It was not until 1980, when the publication of R.M.W. Dixon’s The languages of Australia finally settled the debate and confirmed something the Indigenous people of North Queensland had known all along: that the universal word “kangaroo” came from their language.

A similar obfuscation takes place when you look up the etymology for “chocolate” in English. English “chocolate” is said to derive from Spanish “chocolate” or French “chocolat.” The latter in turn derives from Spanish “chocolate,” and only in another step does it go back to Nahuatl “chocolatl.”

The etymology of the German “Schokolade” similarly highlights inner-European transmission by deriving German “Schokolade” from Dutch “chocolate,” which derives from Spanish “chocolate.” Nahuatl is only mentioned at the end of that list.

In Imperial Eyes, Mary Louise Pratt writes that “an imperial tendency to see European culture emanating out to the colonial periphery from a self-generating center has obscured the constant movement of people and ideas in the other direction” (p. 88).

Amongst other things, colonialism has been a huge project of knowledge transfer from the colonized to the colonizers. The third language lesson of “chocolate” is to lay bare the big con that has made it look as if knowledge only travels in the other direction.

References

Dakin, K., & Wichmann, S. (2000). Cacao and chocolate: a Uto-Aztecan perspective. Ancient Mesoamerica, 11(1), 55-75.
Dixon, R. M. W. (1980). The Languages of Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hock, H. H., & Joseph, B. D. (2009). Language History, Language Change, and Language Relationship: An Introduction to Historical and Comparative Linguistics (2nd rev ed.). Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Pratt, M. L. (2008). Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (2nd ed.). London: Routledge.

Ingrid Piller

Author Ingrid Piller

Dr Ingrid Piller, FAHA, is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization.

More posts by Ingrid Piller

Join the discussion 70 Comments

  • Adalyn Soriano says:

    This is an excellent and enlightening article! I love it and I am expecting more articles on Language and Chocolate on this site!

  • Siyao says:

    Dear Ingrid,

    Thank you very much for your explanation to chocolate, cocoa and kangaroo. I learned about the economics and linguistics of chocolate. The interesting part for me is the etymologies as we can discover the close connection between vocabulary and culture through a history of vocabulary transmission.

    I want to introduce the word “lemon”. It first appeared in c1400, lymon and originated from the Old French limon “citrus fruit” (12c.) = Italian limone, compared with Arabic laimūn, Persian līmūn; cognate with Sanskrit nimbū “the lime”. Here are some examples. Tukano erimoa and Tuyuka uinimoa (among the Betoya group of the Upper Rio Negro in South America) are derived from Portuguese limão. The Brazilian lingua franca, Tupi, has absorbed many loan-words from Portuguese. It retains the word for lemon in the form of limaw, although the liquid “l” is a foreign word in Brazilian (Tatevin, La langue Tapihiya, 1910, p. 142). It has always been thought that the lemon has only recently appeared in China and was introduced by “foreigners”. The results show that this concept is wrong as the Chinese people’s understanding of the lemon began in the Song Dynasty in the middle of the twelfth century.

    Reference:
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/594631
    https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/107204?rskey=3tcMdc&result=1#eid

  • Ness says:

    Thank you for this interesting article!

    There is a colloquial word that is used by Spanish speakers to refer mostly to U.S. citizens, which is “gringo”. There are different versions of the origin of this word.

    The best supported version states that Spaniards used to use the word “griegos” (Greeks) to refer to any foreigner and that this use came from the proverb in Latin “graecum est; non legitur”, which means “this is written in Greek and cannot be read”. This word appeared in writing for the first time in the XXVIII century in a 1787 Spaniard dictionary and it was defined as a term to refer to foreigners who have some sort of accent that impedes natural and smooth communication in Spanish.

    An Argentinian dictionary registers that the term arrived in the American continent a century later and that this word was used by the working class to refer to foreigners in general, except for Brazilian and Portuguese citizens.

    However, there are other versions of the origins of this word that originate in the 1846-1948 Mexican-American war. One of the versions argues that the U.S. soldiers that invaded Mexico used to sing a song called ‘Green Grow the Lilacs’ and that the word “gringo” was a product of the distortion of that sentence by Mexican soldiers.

    Another version states that the U.S. troops used colours to identify themselves, one of them been green. As the battalion commander yelled “green go” to tell his troop to move forward, Mexican soldiers would make fun of this by imitating this war cry and then would use “gringo” (which sounds like “green go”) to refer to their enemies.

    The last two versions have been found to be less likely to be true, but they still have a place in popular knowledge and are deemed to be true by a lot of Spanish speakers.

    Nowadays, the word is defined as a term used to refer to a foreigner, particularly an English speaker or to an unintelligible language.

    References:
    http://etimologias.dechile.net/?gringo
    https://conexionmigrante.com/2019-/07-/28/el-verdadero-origen-de-la-palabra-gringo-no-viene-del-green-go-y-no-es-de-mexico/
    https://dle.rae.es/gringo

  • Jeff says:

    Thank you for the interesting article Ingrid!

    During my time teaching in Japan, I have encountered many loanwords that are used in colloquial Japanese. However, not all these words are borrowed from English. Many are adapted from German, particularly when it comes to medical terminology. An example of this is the word アレルギー (arerugi) which is ‘allergy’ in English and ‘allergie’ in German. Students in Japan are often surprised to learn that the origin of this word is German. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word allergy is a relatively recent addition to the English language first seen in 1907 and is an amalgamation of two ancient Greek words. A quick search with Google Translate finds that ‘allergie’ fits the characteristics of a wandering word with many languages borrowing the term to describe the experience.

    References:
    Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved from: https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/5250?redirectedFrom=allergy#eid

  • Kelly says:

    Thank you Ingrid for sharing this research blog! For me, a chocolate maniac, reading this article is simply so enjoyable. Through this reading, I knew a lot about the history behind the three words “chocolate”, “cacao” and “kangaroo”.

    After I read this article, another generic word “bikini” came to my mind. Bikini is known as a three-point swimsuit worn by women and it invented in 1946. This year, because of the world’s first test explosion of the atomic bomb on Bikini Island in the Pacific Ocean, the French designed this sensational swimsuit in 1947 and named it bikini. Bikini entered China in the 1990s. It is hailed as “the greatest invention of the world’s clothing industry in the twentieth century”. In Chinese, bikini is pronounced as ‘bǐ jī ní’. Also, in French, German, and Italian, it is the same pronunciation as English.

    Overall, language and culture are closely related. The meaning of a word is also inseparable from the cultural context behind it.

    Reference:
    https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/18925?redirectedFrom=bikini#eid

  • Yuxuan Zhang says:

    This article is really interesting. It remains me the first time when I was learning the Spanish word – Chocolate. At first, I thought it should have the same pronunciation with English, as they have the exactly same spelling, and ‘chocolate’ in English is the origin. But, actually not, even though their pronunciations are similar, chocolate pronounces as /ʧoko’late/ in Spanish (Cambridge Online Dictionary). Besides ‘chocolate’, I would like to introduce 2 Chinese words, 嗨 (Hai) and 拜 (Bai)which means ‘Hi’ and ‘Bye’ respectively. These 2 words look like they have different pronunciations with English, but they are same, and that’s why I thought both ‘hi’ and ‘bye’ are from China, as I learned how to say these words in Chinese first and then English. And at that time, I made a joke – I even thought my English teacher (who is a Canadian) could speak these 2 words in Chinese. After reading this article, I am quite interested in where these two words came from, hence, I searched these 2 words in Oxford Online Dictionary, both of their etymologies are English, which made me feel a little bit shouted. They are all frequently used words, and sometimes people like me may not care too much about their origins. However, I changed my mind after reading this article, as knowing where the words are actually from can gain more cultural knowledge and help me to correct my wrong ideas, which is very important as well, as my wrong ideas can bring many culture misunderstandings. Therefore, I really like reading this article.
    Reference:
    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/spanish-english/chocolate
    https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/86651?rskey=6TmsSy&result=4#eid
    https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/25546?rskey=DOFkjY&result=3&isAdvanced=false#eid

    • Thank you, Yuxuan! I love your 嗨 (Hai) and 拜(Bai)examples – they are a great example of how ubiquitous language and culture contact is in fact but how erased and ignored it is in ideology. I’m continuously amazed how deep-seated the idea of purity is, not matter how much it flies in the face of diversity and hybridity.

  • Suyeon Kim says:

    I really appreciate your perspective!! Having read this article, now I realize that I can find the connection between language and culture even in familiar and universal words. I’ve never thought of word chocolate as associated with capitalism or colonialism which has ultimately led to Eurocentric etymologies.
    Another good example of a universal word is ‘yogurt’ originating from Turkish. The ‘yogurt’ was firstly used as English in 1625, when Samuel Purchas, a travel a writer, noted that “Turks don’t eate much Milke, except it bee made sower, which they call Yoghurd.” The Turkish word ‘yogurt’[yoğurt] comes from an Old Turkish root, “yog”, meaning “condense” or “intensify”. In modern Turkish, the word for yogurt is actually pronounced more like the French word, yaourt, with the “gh” in the middle of the Turkish word. It’s uncertain how Samuel Purchas adopted the hard G in his “yoghurd”. Compared to French yaourt, ‘yogurt’ is much more comfortable for an English speaker to say. In my country Korea, we say 요거트[yogeoteu] for ‘yogurt’. It’s clear that Korea have taken on the word ‘yogurt’ via the English version. Looking around European countries, Danish and Dutch pronounce ‘yoghurt’ and Estonian say ‘jogurt’ for ‘yogurt’.

    References:
    https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/232044?redirectedFrom=yogurt#eid
    https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/ingredients/article/the-etymology-of-the-word-yogurt
    https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/words/yogurt#region-3

  • Alexander Genkin says:

    I find it curious that languages differ in whether they inflect the word for “kangaroo” according to number.

    In Russian, unlike English, the word Kenguru is not inflected for number, as in many other countable borrowed nouns that end in vowels.

    In French, inflection takes place in writing only, as with many other nouns in that language. Thus, “un kangourou” becomes “beaucoup de kangourous”, but the plural ending is silent in speech.

    In Italian, by contrast, the distinction between singular and plural spoken forms is very conspicuous. “Il canguro” (i find that language’s consistency with gender word endings quite remarkable) becomes “I canguri”.

    Reference:

    https://en.wiktionary.org/

    Nothing beats this dictionary for me. It contains a massive amount of etymological, grammatical and often phonetic data on words in many different languages, and translations are typically provided. Most importantly, it’s free and accessible globally, helping ordinary people explore the richness and vibrant diversity of world’s languages.

  • 8030c says:

    Thank you so much Ingrid! Now I have a better understanding of chocolate and cacao.
    I want to further discuss the word chocolate. In Chinese, it is called ‘巧克力’ and it is pronounced as ‘ Qiǎo kè lì’. ‘巧Qiǎo’ can mean ‘delicate’. ‘克kè’ means ‘gram’. ‘力lì’ can mean ‘power’ or ‘strength’. It implies a tiny delicate thing brings your vitality. It not only sounds like English, but also introduces the use of chocolate.

    Another universal word I want to discuss is ‘golf’. Modern golf originated in Scotland in the 15th-century. The game of golf has spread throughout the British empire’s domains since 18th century. In 1896, golf was introduced to China after the Anglo-Chinese War. It was called ‘高尔夫’, and it is pronounced as ‘Gāo ěr fū’ which is similar to English. The word ‘高 Gāo’ can mean ‘high’ or ‘high level’. The last word ‘夫fū’ can mean ‘person’. It seems to imply a high-class or high-level sport. According to the research of professor Ling Hongling, a Chinese game called ‘chuiwan’ is very similar to modern golf. It was popular from the eighth to the fourteenth centuries, and some believe it to be the forerunner of golf. During the Qing dynasty, the game of Chuiwan gradually vanished. Now, the majority of Chinese people have never heard of chuiwan, but everyone has heard of golf. It shows how a powerful culture influences the language.

    References:
    Ling Hongling (1991). “Verification of the Fact that Golf originated From Chuiwan” (PDF). The Australian Society for Sports History Bulletin (14)
    https://www.etymonline.com/word/golf
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_golf#cite_note-39

    • Thank you, both for the meaning of 巧克力 and the “golf” example. Does the reading propose a route how chuiwan would have come from China to Scotland in the 15th century?

  • Xiaowen Xu says:

    Hi Ingrid, thanks for this informative post, now I know much more about chocolate!

    The intriguing history of the word “chocolate” makes me think of another food word “coffee”, its pronunciation in many parts of the world sounds really similar as in English. The existing evidence suggests that the world was probably first appeared in Arabic as “qahwah” during the middle of fifteen century (Weinberg and Bealer, 2001). Then it was spread far and wide through human activities, for example, wars and became “kahveh” in Turkish. It came to Europe in about 1600 from Italian “caffè”. And then coffee as beverage or wine became popularized in English-speaking countries as today’s name coffee.

    It came to China in the late nineteenth century by a French missionary in the province of Yunnan (Milan, 2015) called “咖啡”(ka fei, both characters are in the first tone). The Korean and Japanese version of coffee is “커피 co pi” and “コーヒー co hi” respectively, which sounds mostly the same as English.

    Reference List:

    Weinberg, B. A., & Bealer, B. K. (2001). The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World’s Most Popular Drug. Routledge.

    Milan. (2015). Coffee in China. International Coffee Organization. Retrieved from https://www.ico.org/documents/cy2014-15/icc-115-7e-study-china.pdf

    Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved from: https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/35784?rskey=QDqUun&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid

  • Ana Sofia Bruzon says:

    Thank you so much for a fascinating post, Prof. Piller! It is (unsurprisingly) disappointing to learn that Australia’s early colonial settlers sought to deny the cultural knowledge that Australian Aboriginal people had of the local fauna. It clearly exemplifies how Eurocentric etymologies work to erase other cultures and epistemic knowledges.

    The discussion about the etymology of the word “chocolate” in Spanish made me wonder what other names of food or beverages that we consume in Argentina, the part of the world where I come from, have aboriginal roots. The first thing that came to mind is “mate”, an infusion widely drunk in Argentina and other areas of South America, such as Uruguay and Paraguay (and to a lesser extent Southern Brazil and Chile). “Mate”, also known as “yerba” or “yerba mate”, is part of the Argentinean identity. The infusion, which is drunk in a gourd (usually made of dried pumpkin), is bitter and highly caffeinated. The social aspect of “mate” drinking is most notable, as the infusion is shared among people denoting a cultural ritual. Drinking mate with a group of people symbolises friendship and connotes bonding.

    I have always known that “mate” was an autochthonous herb from South America, which has made its way to the “criollo” culture (the mixing of Europeans and the original inhabitants of South America.) According to the “Real Academia Espanola” (https://dle.rae.es/mate?m=form), the word “mate” comes from Quechua “mati”, and it means “calabacita”, in English “little pumpkin”. So today, the word we use for this popular South American infusion is actually the Quechua word for the gourd used to drink it.

    • Thank you, Ana! “Potato” must top the list of indigenous words from South America that have made it globally. After all, the humble potato fed Europe’s population explosion … as Alfred Crosby explains so beautifully with the concept of the “Columbian exchange”
      Crosby, Alfred W. (2004). Ecological imperialism: the biological expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

      Other international terms from South American indigenous languages I can think of right now include “hammock,” “cannibal,” “canoe,” “tucano,” “tapir,” and “mahogany”

  • tviq says:

    In Chinese, chocolate is pronounced as ‘qiǎo kè lì’, and I think it’s probably transliterated.It seemed that chocolate was introduced into China a long time ago. In the forty-fifth year of the Reign of Emperor Kangxi, chocolate was brought to the Imperial palace of the Qing Dynasty by Roman missionaries.Through this article, I learned how the word “chocolate” is called in different countries, which gave me a deeper understanding of this word. It also made me realize that culture and language are closely related.

    Another generic word I’d like to mention here is “sofa,” which is probably a furniture that we all have in our home.
    In Chinese it is pronounced as ‘shā fā’.Pronounced in Spanish as ‘sofá’,’sofá’ in Portuguese,’sofa’ in French.They all seem to have the same root.
    Words like this are quite common in today’s world.

    Reference:
    https://www.etymonline.com/word/sofa#etymonline_v_23830
    https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/sofa

  • Tu Nguyen says:

    After reading your though-provoking article, I’m impressed with the permeability of language boundaries shown in your example of the words “chocolate” and “cacao.” This concept can also be seen in my native language, Vietnamese, which includes numerous migrating words of Chinese, French or English origin due to its history of language contact with these nations. The vast influences of different languages in Vietnamese even cause controversy over the etymology of some Vietnamese words. The word “phở,” our iconic dish of Vietnamese cuisine, can be used as an example in this case. There are only two reasonable and widely accepted theories among many theories about the origin of the word “ phở”. According to the etymology dictionary, the term “phở” could be a French loanword “pot au feu,” meaning “pot on the fire,” which the French introduced to Vietnam during their colonial period. On the other hand, a Vietnamese language dictionary in 1930 defined the word “phở” as a simplified migrating word from 粉 (fěn), the Cantonese term for flat rice noodle (Andrea, 2018).
    Reference:
    Online Etymology Dictionary,
    Andrea, N 2018, The History Of Pho, blog, viewed 3 August 2021,

    • Thanks, Tu! I’m astounded to hear that “pho” is a borrowing in Vietnamese! As I keep saying, the study of languages and cultures in contact demonstrates that we are all hybrids 🙂

  • Ian P says:

    Hi Ingrid,

    I thoroughly enjoyed reading this article because I am passionate about how poor labour rights are, particularly in Africa. In terms of the word ‘chocolate’, in Polish, it is czekolada (hard to pronounce by the way); which is similar to English and it is a FEMALE noun gender. I guess after reading your article, it won’t be hard trying to order chocolate at some shop in a random country. A word or noun that is commonly used around the world is ‘mother. A significant amount of languages start the word mother (in their native tongue) with the letter m; for example, Polish = matka, Romanian = mama, Vietnamese = me, Yiddish = muter, and Albanian = nene/meme. In the Polish dictionary (slownik), a mother is classified “woman, who gave birth to a child and normally upbrings her”. Through the Oxford dictionary, the word mother originates from the Germanic language and is a sense referring to humans and animals.

    References:
    https://www-oed-com.simsrad.net.ocs.mq.edu.au/view/Entry/122640?rskey=Vw5yJV&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid
    https://sjp.pwn.pl/szukaj/matka.html

    • Thanks, Ian! I’m glad you picked up on the fact that something as seemingly trivial as etymology can be a good way to start thinking about big issues related to global justice.
      The “mother” example is fascinating, too – it’s different from “chocolate” in that there is no identifiable source. I’ll speak about the Indo-European versions next week. It is generally assumed that the “ma-” words for “mother” developed as an adult interpretation of the reduplication babbling that all babies (no matter the language/s they are exposed to) engage in when they are a few months old (“mamamama”, “babababa” etc.)

  • Rebecca Song (Hee Won) says:

    After reading this, I became curious about how and when chocolate entered the Korean peninsula. There are two theories about the this very topic. One theory is that the Russian diplomatic minister’s wife gave Empress Myeongseong chocolate as a present, and the other theory is that Ito Hirobumi gave chocolate as bribery to court ladies serving the King. The common ground about these two theories is that chocolate entered the Korean peninsula at around late-19th century and that it was called ‘저고려당‘ (jeo/go/ryeong/dang) ( 貯古齢糖) which is basically how Korea phonetically pronounced the Chinese characters. Deriving it from Chinese characters clearly illustrates the great influence China had in the East-Asian region. After further research into the origins of the Chinese characters, I found that a man named Yonezu in Japan, who has never been abroad, and just by travelling from Tokyo to Yokohama (where there was large foreign settlement), he met a French confectioner and learnt the techniques of chocolate making. This certainly explain why Yonezu chose French-sounding of Kanji (貯古齢糖- cho/ko/rei/tou) to advertising his newly released chocolates on newspaper (Mitsuda, 2014, p.183). I was not able to find further evidence about how this name got into Korea, but with these bits of pieces of evidence, and circumstances Korea was in at the time, it shows a possible link of how Yonezu’s ‘chokoreitou’ in Kanji entered Korea. Currently, the word chocolate is used as a loan word in Korea and is pronounced as chocolit. And the loan word emerged in the Korean society when American army bases were established in Korea.

    Mitsuda, T. (2014). From reception to acceptance: Chocolate in Japan, c. 1870–1935. Food and History, 12(1), 175-200

  • Alicia says:

    As an universal word and a worldwide famous brand, Coca-Cola did not sold well when firstly entered the Chinese market in 1927, which might have a lot to do with the strange taste and unappetizing translation “蝌蝌啃蜡 (kēkēkěnlà)” ( “ ‘可口可乐’— a classical Chinese translation, 2015). This translation may remind many Chinese consumers of a bizarre meaning of “tadpoles eat candles”. In 1930, Jiang Yi’s translation of “可口可乐 (kěkǒukělè, Coca-Cola)” not only had a very similar pronunciation in Chinese and English, but its Chinese meaning was “delicious (可口, kěkǒu) and happiness (可乐, kělè)”, which was perfectly fit for a beverage brand (“ ‘可口可乐’— a classical Chinese translation, 2015).

    Reference:

    “可口可乐”— a classical Chinese translation. (2015). Retrieved August 2, 2021, from https://www.coca-cola.com.cn/stories/kkklzwfydjdzz

    • Thanks, Alicia! Brand name blunders are most amusing examples of language and culture contact gone awry. One of my favorite examples is the Chevrolet Nova, an American car manufactured in the 1960s and 1970s. In Spanish, “no va” means “doesn’t go, doesn’t work” – even less auspicious in a car than candle-eating tadpoles in a drink … 🙃

  • Enkhzaya+Regzendorj says:

    Thanks, Ingrid
    It is quite interesting to know about one of our favourite sweets. Especially, becoming a huge consumer during lockdown 🙂

    In the Mongolian language, we borrowed a lot of words from Russian even though we have our own words as people prefer to use them in the Russian version since they are widely used for a long time. Similarly, the words chocolate, cacao and kangaroo are used exactly same as Russian in our language.
    шоколад [shokolad]
    какао [kakao]
    кенгуру [kenguru]

    Another universal word i think of is “tea/cha/chai” which is almost same in most of languages.

    It began in China and made its way through central Asia, eventually becoming “chay” (چای) in Persian. Due to the trade routes of the Silk Road, along which, according to a recent discovery, tea was traded over 2,000 years ago. This form spread beyond Persia, becoming chay in Urdu, shay in Arabic, and chay in Russian, among others. It even made its way to sub-Saharan Africa, where it became chai in Swahili. The Japanese and Korean terms for tea are also based on the Chinese cha, though those languages likely adopted the word even before its westward spread into Persian.

    Retrieved from https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land-and-sea-to-conquer-the-world/

    • Thanks, Enkhzaya! “Chai” is also related to “tea” (although “tea” made it’s way west no via the Silk Road but sea route, as I explain in the lecture). Interestingly, “chai” has now also been borrowed into English for spiced and sweetened black tea with milk. How do Mongolians prefer to drink their chai?

      • Enkhzaya+Regzendorj says:

        In Mongolia, we have many different kinds of chais/teas.We even have a song about tea as it’s very cultural thing :). Morover, It can be strange for some cultures but our most popular chai is hot milk one contains pieces of dried meat and rice with salt. (sometimes with dumblings) which can replace the almost a meal. Interesingly, here in Australia people put sugar in their teas. It was bit odd for me at first but I love it now .

        • Enkhzaya+Regzendorj says:

          I was trying to catch up on my previews lesson then found out that you talked about tea and chai on week 1 lecture. Sorry 😉

        • Thanks, Enkhzaya! That’s fascinating. In English, too, “tea” can refer to a (light) meal. Or “yum cha” – where the snacks have become primary and the tea (“cha”) is only secondary …

  • Jay says:

    Thank you for sharing the research blog, Ingrid! I enjoyed reading this insightful article because I am definitely a big chocolate fan! (dark-chocolate to be precise). I would like to add a bit of different yet interesting insight about the chocolate. While browsing an interesting article related to sign language and chocolate caught my eyes.
    The chocolate is presented by two hands by making dominant hand into a C-shape and the non-dominant hand lay flat. Although, it is different from other languages which are spoken around the world, I find sign language quite intriguing.
    I am sharing a video which describes the visual description of the sign language for chocolate. https://youtu.be/krPp9btyu5M

    Reference:
    Babysignlanguage.com. 2021. Chocolate. [online] Available at: [Accessed 1 August 2021].

    • Thanks, Jay! Good point to include sign languages. Your example is from American Sign Language and it would be interesting to see what it is in other signed languages. In Auslan (Australian Sign Language), the ‘chocolate’ sign is demonstrated here:

  • Yidan Liu says:

    Lydia
    From this article, I have a deeper understanding of the word “chocolate,” including the history of this word and how different countries called this word. This article helps me clearly be aware of the closing relationship between languages and cultures. I am pretty interested in the universal word “pizza.” Campbell et al. (2008) described that the word “pizza” originates the Latin word “picea.” Pizza was translated into different languages in recent years. For example, “pī sà” is a Chinese word, “pitsa” is a Chichewa word, “pica” is an Albanian word. Although some countries’ characterizes of “pizza” are different, their pronunciations are similar. Finally, based on comparing the various languages of “pizza,” it shows most of them are close relatives and linguistically and may have had a common root.
    Reference
    Campbell, Grant M. Scanlon, Martin G. Pyle, D. Leo. (2008). Bubbles in Food 2 – Novelty, Health, and Luxury – 39.13 Linguistic Roots and Variants of the Word “Pizza.” Elsevier. Retrieved from
    https://app.knovel.com/hotlink/pdf/id:kt012EBZ0D/bubbles-in-food-2-novelty/linguistic-roots-variants

    • Thanks, Yidan! “Pizza” is another fascinating universal word. It’s originally Italian (and the Italian word may go back to a Latin word, as you explain) and it would be interesting to trace the route via which it arrived in Chinese – English maybe?

  • Adam Cameron-Taylor says:

    In the Celtic languages (Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Irish, Scots Gaelic and Manx) the word for chocolate is very much a wanderwort showing only slight differences determined by each language’s phonology.

    Welsh siocled
    Cornish choklet
    Breton chokolad
    Irish seacláid
    Scots Gaelic teoclaid
    Manx shocklaid

    To use Irish as an example, the word Seacláid has been borrowed and has become part of the language. It is inflected for case in the same way as any other noun. In this way, a cake of chocolate is leac sheacláide where seacláid is in the genitive. It is most likely to have been received from English as can be seen in its pronunciation as opposed to the Breton chokolad that shows the influence of French.

    (Dictionaries consulted: https://www.teanglann.ie/en/gram/seacl%c3%a1id, https://geiriadur.uwtsd.ac.uk/index.php?page=ateb&term=chocolate&direction=ew&type=all&whichpart=exact&search=#ateb_top , https://www.cornishdictionary.org.uk/#chocolate, http://devri.bzh/dictionnaire/ch/chokolad/, https://www.faclair.com/, http://www.mannin.info/Mannin/fockleyr/e2m.php).

  • Monica says:

    Reading about the wanderwort chocolate immediately made me think of the Swiss word Müesli which, according to the two references sitting on my bookshelf, is the only Swiss German word which has found its way into a range of other languages (Graf & Wolff, 2010). For many speakers of English, muesli presumably means a breakfast dish of oats and fruit eaten with milk or yoghurt. Derived from the Old High German ‘muos’ (etymonline.com/word/muesli) – this mushy breakfast food is synonymous with the Swiss doctor Maximilian Bircher-Benner who established the health resort Lebendige Kraft (or ‘living strength’) in the early twentieth century in Zurich, where patients were required to eat what became known as ‘Bircher-Müesli’ as part of their journey to health and vitality (Vollflockig, 2004). Müesli definitely makes for a delicious breakfast in any language!

    References:
    Graf, F. & Wolff, E. (Eds.). (2010). Zauberberge. Die Schweiz als Kraftraum und Sanatorium. hier+jetzt.
    Vollflockig. Das Müesli – von Bircher-Benner bis Functional Food. (2004). Eine Publikation zur Ausstellung des Mühleramas – Museum in der Mühle Tiefenbrunnen, in Zusammenarbeit mit dem Bircher-Benner Archiv des Medizinhistorischen Institutes der Universität Zürich.
    http://www.etymonline.com/word/muesli

  • Frances Tran says:

    In Vietnam, we call ‘chocolate’ as ‘sô-cô-la’ and ‘cocoa’ as ‘ca-cao’ and both words are borrowed from French. In the late 19th century, the French colonisation in Indochina brought cocoa to Vietnam (Max, 2020). At that time, ‘chocolate’ and ‘cocoa’ were totally new to Vietnamese, so we imitated French to call it. Moreover, during French colonial period, Vietnamese was forced to speak French, and they immersed in French, used common words in French as habit (L’Atelier An Phu, 2020). Therefore, with new concepts, Vietnamese often borrowed French to call them.

    Another universal word is ‘Déjà vu’ which is from French and literally means ‘already seen’. The term ‘Déjà vu’ was officially proposed in 1896 to describe the feeling that you have already experienced exactly what is happening to you now (Cambridge Dictionary). Today, ‘Déjà vu’ becomes universal word amongst most languages because there are no other single words we can used to describe ‘Déjà vu’ without explaining it in full sentences.

    References:
    Cambridge Dictionary. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/deja-vu
    L’Atelier An Phu (2020). English, French, Vietnamese: Which language for which use?. L’Atelier Blog. https://www.latelier-anphu.com/english-french-vietnamese-which-language-for-which-use/
    Max (2020). Vietnamese Chocolate & Cacao Culture. Dame Cacao. https://damecacao.com/vietnamese-chocolate-cacao-culture/

    • Thanks, Frances! “deja vu” is a great example and very different from chocolate, cacao, coffee, tofu etc. in that a new thing and the word for it do not move together. Interesting to reflect where it sits in the taxonomy of borrowings we discussed – the reasons for this borrowing seem to lie somewhere between novelty and prestige …

  • Yajing Rhonda He says:

    Thank you for sharing the research blog, Ingrid! I indeed enjoyed reading this insightful article about chocolate because I am definitely a big chocolate fan! It is interesting to learn about the origin of chocolate from a social-cultural perspective to help us perceive language and cultural contact amongst food and languages across the world.

    I also want to share some understanding about another universal word that relates to food, which is “ramen”. When I started living in Australia, I noticed native speaks refer to Japanese noodles as “ramen” which has a similar pronunciation as “la mian” in Mandarin. I also found similar pronunciation in Korean “ramyeon” refers to noodles.

    Korean Sin ramyeon (xin la mian) is one of the most popular instant noodles Chinese people also love to eat. In Korea, ramen is called ramyeon (라면 / 拉麵). There are different varieties, such as kimchi-flavoured ramyeon.

    Japanese ramen Ramen (/ˈrɑːmən/) (拉麺, ラーメン, rāmen, Japanese pronunciation: [ɾaꜜːmeɴ]) (literally: “pulled noodles”) is a Japanese noodle soup. English word ramen comes from Mandarin 拉面, and later Japanese ラーメン (Ramen, a type of Chinese noodle dish.).

    According to the Etymology perspective, the word ramen is a Japanese transcription of the Chinese lamian (拉麵). In 1910, the first ramen shop named Rairaiken (来々軒) opened at Asakusa, Tokyo. The restaurant employed 12 Chinese cooks who made a popular dish called “shina soba.” “Shina” is translated to “China,” and “soba” means “noodle dish.” The meal became a hit with blue-collar workers because it was inexpensive and filling.

    My hometown Lanzhou is very famous for handmade noodles and everyone in China calls the tasty beef noodle “lan Zhou la mian”. In China, we add the title of city or province in front of the word “la mian” to represent the speciality of a certain place. There are a variety of noodles can be found and tasted in different regions with diverse flavour and features. Noodles are an essential ingredient and staple in Chinese cuisine. Chinese noodles vary widely according to the region of production, ingredients, shape or width, and concept of cooking. Noodle cuisine is an important part of most regional cuisines within China with its authentic taste. In China, people add the title of city or province in front of the word “la mian” to represent the speciality of a certain place based on the local food culture. There are a rich variety of noodles can be found and tasted in different regions in China with diverse flavour and features which represent the diverse Chinese noodle cuisine culture in china.

    If you would like to taste “lan zhou la mian”, there is a noodle restaurant right here on our Macquaire University campus opposite the courtyard! I hope you will enjoy it!

    References
    https://etymologeek.com/eng/ramen/19723950
    https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-history-of-the-ramen-noodle
    https://www.etymologynerd.com/blog/stretchy-noodles
    https://www.mashed.com/262857/you-probably-dont-know-about-the-true-origin-of-ramen/

  • Tram (Sarah) says:

    Another universal word I would like to mention here is “coffee”, one of the most famous daily beverages in the world. The journey of the word “coffee” through languages and cultures is definitely as fascinating as “cacao and chocolate.”
    According to many records, European languages adopted this word through the Ottoman Turkish “kahve”, which derived from the Arabic qahwah (قهوة). In some other writings, its etymology didn’t end here but can trace back to its original natural habitat, which is Kaffa, a province in Ethiopia. However, it seems that the hypothesis related to Kaffa hasn’t been proven yet. Through time, we’ve got the word for this type of energy drink as English “coffee”, French “café”, Italian “caffè”, Vietnamese “cà phê”, etc.
    Along with cacao and chocolate, coffee was first brought into Vietnam in the 19th century (1857) by French missionaries (a French Catholic priest in the case of coffee). Therefore, the Vietnamese “cà phê” is actually a borrowed word from French. In fact, French colonialism has made a major impact on the Vietnamese language. Frankly, it is not hard to list out hundreds of Vietnamese words that are originated from French.

    References:
    – Ukers, W. H. (1922). All about coffee. Tea and Coffee Trade Journal Co.
    https://www.kolimi.com/blog/where-does-coffee-come-from/
    https://heritage-line.com/magazine/the-history-of-vietnamese-coffee-and-how-to-brew-your-own/

    • Thanks, Tram! Another great example – and, as with chocolate, the linguistic change is the least of it … as Khai mentioned below, Vietnam is now the world’s 2nd largest coffee exporter.

  • Anka says:

    Speaking of the word of chocolate in Chinese – 巧克力 (qiǎo kè lì), it actually has another version – 朱古力 (zhū gǔ lì). The former one is more related to English word “chocolate” and the latter, which is more frequently used in Cantonese, is closer to French “chocolat”. Chocolate was primitively served as a gift a papal envoy presented to Emperor Kangxi. That probably could be one of the contributions to that we use the word 巧克力 (qiǎo kè lì) more in inland China. Then the word 朱古力 (zhū gǔ lì) came to us from southern cities where more and more western commodities rushed into since 1990’s.
    Another sweet thing cookie, which stems from the Dutch word “koekje” meaning little cake and is called 曲奇 (qǔ qí) in Madarin and “kuk1 kei4” in Cantonese, seems have the similar background in China. It was mainly imported to inland China through Macau and Taiwan China ports in 80’s.
    All these interesting findings could help to prove a part of the colonial history of southern cities of China, that really tells the importance and usefulness of the study of language and culture.

    References:
    https://www.etymonline.com/
    https://www.g-i-m.com/en/unternehmen/about-us/publications/news/news-2017/china-spotlights/The-Chinese-Chocolate-Boom-1.html
    http://labambacookies.com/links.html

    • Thank you, Anka! 曲奇 is a fascinating example, too, because I’m guessing there are “indigenous” Chinese cookies, too – what are they called in Chinese? I’m thinking of things like Chinese almond or walnut cookies. And then there are the famous fortune cookies, of course, which Westerners believe are Chinese … an easy read about this quirky language and culture contact story can be found in:
      Lee, Jennifer 8. (2008). The fortune cookie’s origin: Solving a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside a cookie. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/travel/16iht-fortune.9260526.html

      • Anka says:

        Thanks for your recommend Ingrid!
        The first word popped up in my mind was 饼干 (bǐng gān) when I first time met the snack cookies and it means dried pancakes.

  • Phan Nguyen Quang Khai (Khai) says:

    In Vietnam, French missionaries brough the first cocoa bean in the 19th century. Since Vietnam is a French colony, it has soon been introduced with as a treat which came along with the bourgeoisie and the affluent. Some early writings mentioned a bishop named Gernot experimented with growing cocoa trees in Ben Tre (South of Vietnam) in the late 1800s (Max, 2020). However, most of the credits for cocoa plantation in Vietnam belongs to Dr. Alexandre Yersin (Louis Pasteur’s student, a famous scientists). The Vietnamese word of cocoa is “ca cao” which derives from French “cacao” (Dang, 2011). Cocoa and coffee are not native plants but were introduced by colonizing countries to Vietnam. Hence, Vietnamese borrows the words from French.

    References:
    Dang, Thai Minh. (2011). Dictionnaire Vietnamiens – Français: Les mots vietnamiens origine française.
    Max, A. (2020, February 6). Vietnamese chocolate & Cacao Culture. Dame Cacao. https://damecacao.com/vietnamese-chocolate-cacao-culture/.

  • Brynn says:

    I love universal words! One of my favourites is the word “internet”. The word itself has only existed in English since the early 1970s, and it seems that as the internet has become more and more necessary in our lives the word itself has been borrowed into many other languages. Here are a few examples:

    Japanese: インターネット ( intɑ:netoʊ)
    Icelandic: internetið
    Spanish: internet
    Macedonian: интернет
    Polish: internet

    Interestingly, when I lived in Spain about 15 years ago we used the term “el red” for “internet”, but now it is much more common to just say “el internet”. It seems that Mandarin uses a word that does not sound much like internet (and Mandarin speakers, please correct me if I am wrong!) – 互联网 (Hùliánwǎng). I wonder if, as time passes, a word that sounds more like the English “internet” will be adopted by Mandarin speakers in the same way that “el red” became “el internet” in Spain.

    References:
    https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=internet
    https://www.indifferentlanguages.com/words/internet

    • Thanks, Brynn! I love them, too 🙂 … your example of “el red” being displaced by “el internet” is interesting. It seems to me that, in English, “the web” is becoming more frequent – it’s not replacing “internet”, for sure, but both expressions exist and are used regularly, along with “the net”

    • Anka says:

      Hi Brynn,
      This is Anka from China, the word 互联网 (Hùliánwǎng) you presented in your article is perfectly good!
      Actually this word is translated based on its meaning instead of pronunciation. 互联 (Hùlián) means interactive connection, and 网 (wǎng) means web in Chinese. That’s why it does not sound like English word “internet” at all. If you are interested, we do have another word sounds very much like “internet”, that is 英特尔(yīng tè er) meaning the enterprise or its brand Intel.
      For your assumption of that some words will be adopted by Mandarin with the pronunciation similar with it’s original version, I have to tell that it’s already true, especially at the aspect of things have longer history like some kind of food.
      Hope this could help.

      Anka

  • STUDENT says:

    The article drew my attention to a number of words that we use in my first language, and we don’t notice that they are not parts of it. As for the word “chocolate”, in Arabic we call it “shokolata” “شوكولاتة”, but after reading this article I realized that the letter “o” doesn’t even exist in Arabic.

    After a quick search on the internet, I found out that the word “telephone” is one of the universal words. It is believed that the word “Telephone” comes from French “téléphone”, where “télé” means “far” and phone means “sound/ voice”. Arabic speakers still use the word “Telephone” although its Arabic alternative is “Hatef”, “هاتف”.

    telephone | Search Online Etymology Dictionary (etymonline.com)

    • Thank you! Interestingly, “tele” and “phone” are Greek morphemes: Ancient Greek and Latin have been used in European languages to create the terms for many modern inventions. “Television”, “telescope”, “telegraph”, “telegram” are other examples, and, more recently, “telehealth”, “telemarketing” etc.

  • Thanks, Lynn! The word for ‘coffee’ is another great example of a universal food term … the point about Valentines Day is great, too – not only food and the terms for it travel across languages and cultures, but also customs associated with it …

  • Lynn says:

    It is interesting to find out where the word ‘’chocolate’’ came from and how it is called in different countries and cultures. In my country, Vietnam, we often say sô-cô-la. Cacao was brought to Vietnam by the French in the 1800s (Max, 2020). It was translated by Vietnamese people and cacao is a borrowed word. When mentioning sô-cô-la, we often think about sweet chocolate bars that couples give to each other on the Valentine’s Day that is a significant example of culture exchange and integration as we did not have this event before. Thanks for the coming of sô-cô-la, we know more about the Western cultures and customs.
    Another universal word is ‘’coffee’’ that originally came from Kaffa Kingdom – now is known as a province in Ethiopia. The Arabs wrote it as “قهوة” pronounced /’kah.wa/. After buying it, the Venetian merchants called it ‘’caffe’’. Through a few other changes, it was finally called ‘’coffee’’ in English. As one of the most essential beverages in the daily life, ‘’coffee’’ can be translated into about 100 languages. For example:
    • Chinese: 咖啡 (Kāfēi)
    • French: Café
    • German: Kaffee
    • Italian: Caffè
    • Japanese: コーヒー (Kōhī)
    • Korean: 커피 (Keopi)
    • Portuguese: Café
    • Russian: Кофе (Kofe)
    • Spanish: Café
    • Afrikaans: Koffie
    • Dutch: Koffie
    • Finnish: Kahvi
    • Greek: Καφές (Kafés)
    • Hindi: कॉफ़ी (Kofee)
    • Icelandic: Kaffi
    • Romanian: Cafea
    • Swedish: Kaffe
    These point out that the culture was transferred by the language. The language is affected by the culture and its forms and meanings can be changed.

    Thanks for the impressive article!

    References
    Coffee | Search online etymology dictionary. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary | Origin, history and meaning of English words. https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=coffee

    Max. (2020). Vietnamese chocolate & cacao culture. Dame Cacao. https://damecacao.com/vietnamese-chocolate-cacao-culture/

    Narayanliu. (2017). What’s the buzz? All about coffee in different languages and cultures. FluentU Language Learning. https://www.fluentu.com/blog/coffee-in-different-languages/

  • Roxie says:

    This article is quite intriguing not only because I like chocolate but also the history behind it. From the article, I know that chocolate, a universal word, shows capitalism and colonialism all over the world. These migrating words, like “cacao”, “sugar”, “kangaroo”, can also track back to the linguistic colony, which reminds me of the word “tofu”. It is known by people that tofu originated from China. Even if various languages have different pronunciations, “tofu” is pronounced “Tobu” by Koreans, “To-fuu” by Burmese, and “Tofu” by Indonesians. Additionally, China and Japan have the same Kanji characters for “Tofu”.
    Overall, I can tell languages and cultures are connected somehow.
    Reference:
    http://www.tofu-as.com/english/tofu/history/05.html

  • Kim says:

    After learning about the etymology of “chocolate”, “cacao”, and “kangaroo”, it was in fact interesting to see how the words are similar across different languages. Hence, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about how the words are spoken in Korean. The Korean language pronounces these words similar to the way they are pronounced in English.
    This led me to wonder whether the Korean word for “chocolate” (chokollis) was influenced and borrowed directly from the originating Nahuatl language or rather from another language that borrowed it first.
    Doing some research, I discovered that chocolate was a food for the “royal”. It was first the Aztec king Moctezuma who enjoyed the beverage from cacao seeds. This drink was then brought to Spain (Europe), where it was presented to the Spanish monarch, Carlos I. That was the start of how chocolate began to spread worldwide. Likewise, chocolate first entered Korea as a snack for the royals. It was available to the general public only when the American soldiers entered the Korean peninsula during post-World War II.
    Learning from this history, my guess is that the English word could have been a bigger influence in transferring the word into Korean. It is fascinating to see how the word for “chocolate” actually moved throughout the globe. Nevertheless, we cannot ignore where the word all started.

    Reference:
    https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=chocolate
    https://www.lotteconf.co.kr/en/brand/sense/chocolate

    • Thanks, Kim, for the interesting background. Btw, is there an etymological dictionary for the Korean language that might have more details?

      • Kim says:

        It was actually very difficult to find one like the english etymology dictionary. Most information were written on blogs; hence information from an official website of a chocolate making company was the closest I could get from receiving reliable information.

        *However, I do think there is a paper copy of a Korean etymology dictionary (not a website).

  • Anaid says:

    I had never considered the importance of knowing the origin of the words we use daily in Spanish like chocolate. This word comes from the nahuatl (Aztecan) xocoatl, xococ, which means ‘bitter’, and atl, which would translate ‘water’. Initially, the chocolate was a drink made by the Aztecs and consumed for ceremonial purposes. Its flavour was very different from what we know today, prepared with cocoa, sugar and water or milk.
    In fact, in some regions of Mexico, for example Chiapas, Oaxaca and Guerrero, it is still prepared with water and without sugar or honey.
    Another universal word is taxi. It comes from ancient Greek word τάξις (taxis), which means payment; also according to the Spanish Dictionary RAE, it is an abbreviated form of the word “taximeter”. Nowadays it is the most common word amongst most languages. If we translate it in google translate in 64 languages, 22 use the word taxi and 8 taksi. Thanks, I loved the article!
    Reference:
    http://etimologias.dechile.net/
    https://dle.rae.es/

    • Thanks, Anaid! You are right to point out that not only the form of words changes as they move across languages but also their meaning.
      Re “taxi”, when I lived in Abu Dhabi a decade ago, there were two types of taxis: old and cheap vehicles called اُجرة (ojrah; from the Arabic word for ‘rent’) and then there were modern and much more expensive cars called “taxi” … now, the old and cheap taxis with their Arabic name have completely disappeared…

  • Laura SKh says:

    Glad I didn’t read this until after Easter 😉

  • Pia Tenedero says:

    I’ll never look at chocolate eggs and bunnies the same way again. Great reminder that there’s more to chocolate than pretty packaging. Such important language lessons and social realities that are glossed over by this highly commercialized way of commemorating Easter! Even the religious significance of Easter is easily lost in all this chocolate! Thanks for making us think of chocolate more, Ingrid!

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