The Vocabularist – Food to make the world go round

Word derivations

Can you guess from which language each of these food names originated?

• Soup derives from French- C13 soupe
• Cheese, Latin – cyse
• Coleslaw, Dutch – kool ‘cabbage’ + sla ‘salad’
• Tea, Chinese – Mandarin ch’a, C16 Portuguese cha
• Banana, African – borrowed by C16 Portuguese
• Coffee, Arabic – qahwah, from the Kaffa region of Ethiopia
• Chilli, Spanish – borrowed from C17 Aztec
• Soy, Japanese – variant of shoyu, borrowed by C17 Dutch

The English language (as well as its collective stomach!) is ever-changing, which is why it is so vibrant.

Having said that, ‘Steak & kidney pie’ doesn’t seem to have travelled quite so well in the other direction as a global food…..oh well, there’s still time this century I suppose….