Local terms for Tea And Coffee, which stimulate your appetite

Local terms for coffee and tea

At kopi tiams (Chinese: 咖啡店; pinyin: kā fēi diàn; literally "coffee shop"), coffee and tea are usually ordered in the local language.

Coffee

·         Kopi, coffee with condensed milk

·         Kopi-gau, coffee with condensed milk in strong brew – "gau" (Chinese: 厚; pinyin: hòu) means "thick" in Hokkien

·         Kopi-po, coffee with condensed milk in weak brew – "po" (Chinese: 薄; pinyin: báo) means "thin" in Hokkien

·         Kopi-C, coffee with evaporated milk

·         Kopi-C-kosong, coffee with evaporated milk and no sugar - "kosong" means "empty" or "nothing" in Malay

·         Kopi-O, coffee with sugar only - means "coffee black" colloquially

·         Kopi-O-kosong, coffee without sugar or milk

·         Kopi-O-kosong-gau, a strong brew of coffee without sugar or milk

·         Kopi-bing or Kopi-ice, coffee with milk, sugar and ice

·         Kopi-siu-dai, coffee with less sweetened milk

·         Kopi-gah-dai, coffee with extra sweetened milk

Tea

·         Teh, tea with milk and sugar

·         Teh-C, tea with evaporated milk

·         Teh-C-kosong, tea with evaporated milk and no sugar

·         Teh-O, tea with sugar only

·         Teh-O-kosong, plain tea without milk or sugar

·         Teh tarik, the Malay tea described above

·         Teh halia, tea with ginger water

·         Teh-bing, tea with ice, also known as Teh-ice

·         Teh-siu-dai, tea with less sweetened milk

·         Teh-gah-dai, tea with extra sweetened milk

Drinks example lke the above list could be extra ordered adding more ice or more sugar or milk. For example, one can add the "bing" (Chinese: 冰; pinyin: bīng; literally "ice") suffix to form other variations such as Teh-C-bing (tea with evaporated milk with ice).

These names are indicative of the multi-racial society in Singapore as they are formed by words from different languages, and have become part of the lexicon of Singlish. For example, "teh" is the Malay word for "tea" which itself originated from Hokkien, "bing" is the Hokkien word for "ice", "kosong" is the Malay word for "zero" to indicate no sugar, and C refers to Carnation, a brand of evaporated milk.