The history of the word coffee involves several phonetic difficulties. The European languages got the name of the beverage about 1600 from the original Arabic [Arabic] _qahwah_, not directly, but through its Turkish form, _kahveh_. This was the name, not of the plant, but the beverage made from its infusion, being originally one of the names employed for wine in Arabic. Sir James Murray, in the _New English Dictionary_, says that some have conjectured that the word is a foreign, perhaps African, word disguised, and have thought it connected with the name Kaffa, a town in Shoa, southwest Abyssinia, reputed native place of the coffee plant, but that of this there is no evidence, and the name _qahwah_ is not given to the berry or plant, which is called [Arabic] _bunn_, the native name in Shoa being _bun_. Contributing to a symposium on the etymology of the word coffee in _Notes and Queries_, 1909, James Platt, Jr., said: The Turkish form might have been written _kahve_, as its final _h_ was never sounded at any time. Sir James Murray draws attention to the existence of two European types, one like the French _cafe_, Italian _caffe_, the other like the English _coffee_, Dutch _koffie_. He explains the vowel _o_ in the second series as apparently representing _au_, from Turkish _ahv_. This seems unsupported by evidence, and the _v_ is already represented by the _ff_, so on Sir James's assumption _coffee_ must stand for _kahv-ve_, which is unlikely. The change from _a_ to _o_, in my opinion, is better accounted for as an imperfect appreciation. The exact sound of a in Arabic and other Oriental languages is that of the English short U, as in "cuff." This sound, so easy to us, is a great stumbling-block to other nations. I judge that Dutch _koffie_ and kindred forms are imperfect attempts at the notation of a vowel which the writers could not grasp. It is clear that the French type is more correct. The Germans have corrected their _koffee_, which they may have got from the Dutch, into _kaffee_. The Scandinavian languages have adopted the French form. Many must wonder how the _hv_ of the original so persistently becomes _ff_ in the European equivalents. Sir James Murray makes no attempt to solve this problem. Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, who also contributed to the _Notes and Queries_ symposium, argued that the _hw_ of the Arabic _qahwah_ becomes sometimes _ff_ and sometimes only _f_ or _v_ in European translations because some languages, such as English, have strong syllabic accents (stresses), while others, as French, have none. Again, he points out that the surd aspirate _h_ is heard in some languages, but is hardly audible in others. Most Europeans tend to leave it out altogether.