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--- In romconlang@yahoogroups.com, Peter Collier <petecollier@...> wrote: > > Anyone have any details on when the word for coffee > was first attested in the various Romance languages? > In French, "caffé" survives from 1674, but the first coffee shop had opened 20 years earlier. The word is a loan from Italian, the shop being in Marseilles. There is an earlier reference (1611) to "cahoa", which is a good attempt at the the Arabic "qahwa". The Italian (in all Romance, I think) is from the Turkish "kahve". For a Mediterranean Romance, you could take a form closer to the Turkish or Arabic: my Liburnes has "cava" for the drink, but "cafè" (from Italian) for the place. David