All words › HSK 3 · Food & drink

咖啡

kā fēi

HSK 3 · word 1639 of 3,000

Meaning

• (loanword) coffee

Measure word

杯 bēi

Example sentence

Characters in 咖啡

• 咖 kā a mouth radical over a phonetic, the standard way to write a borrowed sound
• 啡 fēi the second syllable of coffee; the mouth radical marks it as borrowed

咖 and 啡 are both mouth-radical characters chosen for their sound alone. Neither means anything by itself — the word is coffee written phonetically.

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