The e in coffee
Pinyin News recently blogged on the letter "e" being used in Chinese characters on a DVD cover. I discovered another example of an "e" in Chinese characters. However, this one is something of a clever play on words.
The Chinese characters in the above sign are 壹咖啡 (yī kāfēi). However, the first character, 壹, is written with an "e" in it. 壹 is the complex form of the number one so the name of the coffee shop would translate as "Number One Coffee". The character 壹 is pronounced yī. This is very similar to the pronunciation of the letter "e" in English. Hence, the use of the "e" is a play on words.
There are a number of these stores around Taipei. I guess they are trying to market themselves as offering good value for money. The sign pictured below (taken at a different store) says, "Who said you can't get a good cup of coffee for NT$35?"
Sunday morning cycling
Coffee, dreams and the value of things
Vignettes of a day in Taipei
More Taiwanese Chinese
Links 19 January 2009
Posted: April 7th, 2006 under Languages in Taiwan.
Tags: Chinese characters
Comments
Comment from fiLi
Time 7 April 2006 at 7:16 pm
Whaaoo… neat. That’s very interesting.
There are a lot of examples of combining Hebrew and English in one word all across Israel, but I’ve never seen anything like that with Chinese and English.
Comment from Mark S.
Time 7 April 2006 at 12:51 pm
Cool. Though the font is certainly blander, the usage is much more interesting than the example I found.
I wonder if there are any English nouns that Taiwan people wouldn’t put an “e” in front of in an attempt to sound “modern.” That whole e-generation thing. I have some related examples here.