Kathy in Rye, New York, used to live in Central Pennsylvania, where she was surprised by a friend announcing The coffee’s all meaning “The coffee’s all gone.” This phrase is a vestige of Pennsylvania Dutch, a dialect of German. The coffee’s all is what linguists call a calque, a direct borrowing of the German word alle, which means “finished” or “all gone.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “The Coffee “Is All””
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Kathy Constable. I’m calling from Rye, New York.
Rye, New York. Well, welcome, Kathy. What can we do for you?
When I was living in central Pennsylvania, I had the experience of going to someone’s house.
And the husband asked me if I’d like a cup of coffee.
And his wife said, oh, no, the coffee’s all.
I looked at her and I looked at him.
And then the son of these people, he whispered and he said, that means it’s all gone.
What I found when I was in this area is that people would always use the term, oh, it’s all.
They wouldn’t say it’s all gone or it’s all done.
It took me a while to get used to understanding what they meant.
And I just wondered where it came from.
I talked to other people in rural areas of the country, and they never heard of it.
So you were in central Pennsylvania, Kathy?
I was in central Pennsylvania in a farming area.
Were there a lot of Pennsylvania Dutch speakers in the area?
It was not a Pennsylvania Dutch area.
It’s a little north and west of that.
There were a lot of Pennsylvania Germans in that area.
Well, what you’ve heard, despite the fact that there may not have been Pennsylvania Dutch speakers exactly where you were, is an imprint of the Pennsylvania Dutch language.
The Dutch meaning, in this case, a dialect of German, not actually Dutch Dutch.
And it’s a calque, C-A-L-Q-U-E, from that dialect of German, where the word all, A-L-L-E, all, means finished or gone.
And so it’s borrowed directly from German into English.
And used exactly in English as it would be in German.
And you can find it as far back as the 1850s, mainly in Pennsylvania, but also a little bit in Indiana and Ohio, in the places where the Pennsylvania Dutch speakers settled, even if people no longer speak the language there.
Well, that explains a lot.
Yeah.
It does.
And we’re grateful to you for the field report.
Okay.
Call us again sometime.
And thank you.
You broaden my knowledge.
All right.
Bye-bye.
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