Learn Listen Speak

Welsh phrases. Food, drink and coffee

Even listening to a few phrases helps cement basic vocabulary. The two most useful phrases here (for the coffee drinkers among us) are Coffi du, os gwelwch yn dda 'a black coffee, please' and Coffi gwyn, os gwelwch yn dda 'a white coffee please'.

The basic vocabulary here being (other than coffee and please) Welsh colours.

Coffee in Welsh

The above has raised the vexing question of Welsh coffee related vocabulary.

As it happens Surface languages" is a personal site, so I can digress tangentially if I want to. This is lucky as what follows is a total Welsh coffee related digression. Many people might want to order a mocha, americano, cappuccino or flat white. In fact, it is considered quite retro to order Coffi du as I do. As a Coffi du drinker, it had never really occurred to me that this is a subject of some depth.

Again luckily I found a link on Wales online with a shop sign listing some coffee related vocabulary. It isn't actualy a vocabulary list but might as well be.

The word that caught my eye wasn't the tranlsation of Coffi du as 'Americano', nor Coffi cryf bach as 'cortado'. I don't even know what I'd get if I ordered a cortado, but 'small strong cofee' makes a lot of sense. In case you were wondering, Coffi cryf bach isn't an expresso. An expresso is deffro

Ffrothi Coffi

The fun tranlsation is ffrothi Coffi 'cappuccino'.

Just for the sake of completeness, it has been pointed out that Coffi ffrothi would be more apt due to Welsh word order.

See also Food and drink. 1 and Food and drink. 3.