英文豆知識 – 咖啡

英國人喜歡紅茶是眾所周知的事情，相對地美國人比較喜歡咖啡的樣子（？）

咖啡的英文名當然就是coffee，但是在美國，咖啡有好幾種不同的別名喔！這裡用的a cup of joe，正正就是一杯咖啡的意思（再口語化一點就變成a cuppa joe了）

那麼為什麼會出現a cup of joe這個別稱呢？呃……好像連美國人自己也不太清楚的說（。
不過還是有幾種說法啦～其中一個比較多人講的就是某位美國海軍軍官下令禁酒，沒酒可喝的軍人們只好跑到喝咖啡。他們因為很不爽這位軍官，所以拿了他的名字當作咖啡的別稱順便暗婊他…聽起來很有道理，可惜好像已經被snopes流言終結了

另外一個說法是當年大部分咖啡豆是產至爪哇地區的，於是人們便用了爪哇Java作為咖啡的別稱（Java程式語言的LOGO是咖啡杯就是因為這個），然後Java加上Mocha就是Jamoke，簡稱就是Joe啦。好吧聽起來很扯，而事實上我自己也覺得很扯（喂

還有一個說法就是因為Joe在美國一直是普通老百姓，平民打工族的代名詞（普通人就是所謂的average joe），咖啡這麼平民的飲料自然就被稱為Joe了

哪種說法才是真的可能沒有人會知道，但是反正一直這樣叫也沒差了吧？

It’s a well-known fact that the British love their tea, meanwhile it seems that the Americans picked coffee as their national beverage (I think)

Coffee is obviously the name of this caffeine-laden, bitter-tasting liquid, but it actually has several nicknames in America! In this comic I used “a cup of joe" which means a cup of coffee. An even more casual way of saying it would be “a cuppa joe"

So where did this term even come from? Well…….looks like the Americans themselves aren’t very sure either. Still, there’s a few theories for that. One of the more popular theory is that back then there was this Navy officer who banned drinking alcohol on board. Since the sailors can’t get their booze, they resorted to drinking coffee. As a result, disgruntled sailors used the name of the officer, Joe, to refer to coffee as a way to insult him. Sure sounds plausible right? Too bad snopes already busted that myth.

Another idea is that people used to nickname coffee “Java" because back then most of the coffee beans in the marker are from Java (by the way, the coding language Java has a cup of coffee as its logo because of this nickname)
Apparently as people kept calling it “java", somehow it ended up morphing into “joe" by getting combined with “mocha" to form “jamoke". Yeah, sounds like a stretch. I kind of find it hard to believe either.

Some instead argued that because the term “joe" is used to describe common people and workers (an ordinary person is called an average joe, for example), naturally a down-to-earth drink like coffee would be given the name “joe" as well.

Maybe nobody really knows the truth behind “cup of joe", but people have used the nickname for decades anyways so I guess it doesn’t matter?