Cold and hot in European languages; Freddo Delicato Nespresso coffee

 Freddo Delicato coffee capsules from Nespresso. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

We received Italian coffee capsules from Nespresso labelled freddo delicato and wondered if they were for cold or hot coffee. 

I used google translate to confirm. From my days as a sub-editor with IPC women's magazines, I know that you should always check, even if you are 99.9 per cent sure. 

UK - cold (adjective and noun, eg cold tap, the cold (noun), the cold weather (adjective)  . Similar word Freezing.

Italian - freddo

French - froid

Portuguese - frio

Spanish - frio

UK - hot - (memory aids: similar words  using b and c - close, calescent, baking hot, balmy; c pronounced like s - sultry, sweating)

Italian - caldo

French - chaux

Spanish - calor (heat,noun)

Spanish - caliente (hot, adjective)

Portuguese - calor

We tried the new flavour of coffee. It was mild, not bitter, pleasant. Not the wake you up strong coffee some would prefer for first thing in the morning, but good for day, or mid-day. I must admit we shared one capsule between two. But we often do that, and the stronger coffees still taste stronger.

Useful Websites

translate Google 

Nespresso

Reverso

https://context.reverso.net/translation/

https://context.reverso.net/translation/english-portuguese/

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Water bottles and drinking water when travelling

You need moisture in Singapore where it is so hot that you are perspiring all the time. At a morning meeting I looked for a drink. No water provided. 

The days of giving everybody a small plastic bottle of water and coming to an end (October 2018). Even if you stay in air conditioned offices and use cars and taxis, only a proportion of the car parks are underground. You spend a lot of time in overground car parks or bus stops or open air taxi stands. So you need water.

Yes, going green, saving trees, not using plastic, all very well, but people need a drink. I went to two meetings in a day with no water provided.

I used to carry water bottles. Then I got backache. I ditched the umbrella and water bottle, just carrying too much. 

We are in transit over water in Singapore. Early days - no water fountains. Then along come the gyms and hotels and coffee shop. Now you are expected to carry a water bottle and fill it up from a water fountain which has paper cups or no cups. You can buy a collapsible cup.

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Romanian Words of the week: hard, honest, hot, old and soft

Problem
How do you remember Romanian words?

Answers
1 Romanian come from the word Roman and the language is similar to Italian.
2 Find similar letters and sounds in the Romanian and English.
3 Romanian words look like phonetic (written like they sound) or simplified versions of Italian or English.
4 If you tell yourself that Romanian is simplified Italian, or simplified English, you will remind yourself how to recognize and remember words as well as giving yourself a pep talk.

Romanian - English
honest - cumsecade (Cum is like the Latin for with. S e c a d e sounds like security.)
iuti - hot Start by remembering the letter t in both words. Both words are all vowel open mouth sounds.  Imagine you have burned the tip of your tongue with hot tea, gasp and spit it out. IUTI!
moi - soft (like moist)
tari - hard both words have the letter AR in the middle. T and D sound similar. I and hi and both open mouth sounds. Reverse the t -i and h-d  and fix them onto the middle letters and it will remind you.
vechi - old (plural) like the Italian Ponte Vecchio, Italian for old bridge, in Florence, Italy. Simpler

English - Romanian
hard - tari
honest - cumsecade
hot - iuti
old - vechi
soft - moi

Tips
www.duolingo.com
http://romaniatourism.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and languages. I have more posts on Romanian, Italian, French, German, languages and visiting these countries. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Tea, from India, China, Singapore, Japan, with hot or cold water

Problem
Which tea - so many! (So many, la! That's what the locals say in Singapore.)

Answer
A little of what you fancy does you good.

Stories of Hot and Cold Tea
Tea warms you on a cold day in England. Water to hydrate you. Warmth to warm you. Volume to fill your stomach. Caffeine to give you energy. Gratitude to their server. Rest by sitting on a chair. Time out from troubles. Distraction from problems.

Can tea cool you on a hot day? The Indians drink hot drinks. Hot drinks, like hot foods in hot countries, such as curry, cause you to perspire. The theory is that the perspiration helps you to cool.

(I carry a paper fan or create one by creasing a piece of white paper into a concertina.)

In England we drink tea hot. But in Singapore tea is cold or more often luke warm.

Chinese Tea
The Chinese Singaporeans think cold drinks are bad for you.

If you ask a waiter for a glass of water, the server in a restaurant will ask you, "Do you want your water warm or cold?" Expect that. Then if you hear them mutter, 'Warmorcoal?", or "hottacoal?", you will know what you are being asked.

Japanese Tea
Green tea seems to be the health fanatics favourite for this year. But so many fruit flavours are avoidable. (See my previous posts.)

Ice
I think ice is potentially bad for you, not worth the risk. Why?
1 Firstly, you are warned to avoid ice being added to bottled drinks in countries where it is unsafe to drink the water. Bottled water has been purified, but ice could be from a tap.
2 Ice dilutes drinks.
3 Ice is occasionally the source of poisoning. I have read of at least two cases of mass poisoning at weddings. Ice was previously used to cool raw fish! New regulations require ice to be transported covered and contained, not loose where it can pick up contamination.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer

Garam masala means what? Hot and spicy, hot, why hot?

I see it so often on 'Indian' restaurant menus in UK and Singapore run by people from the 'Indian' continent (often Pakistani or Bangladeshi owned) restaurants in London. I have it in the spice rack. On the menu from a Eurasian restaurant in Singapore I came across the single word m a s a l a (not nasal -predictive text tried to insert that).

What does a Google search reveal? First, Wikipedia.

Garam masala (Hindi: गरम मसाला, Urdu: گرم مصالحہ‎ garam ("hot") and masala (a mixture of spices)) is a blend of ground spices common in North India, South India, Pakistan, and other South Asian cuisines.^[1] It is used alone or with other seasonings. The word garam refers to "heat" in the Ayurvedic sense of the word, meaning "to heat the body" as these spices, in the Ayurvedic system of medicine, elevate body temperature.

Cooling Cucumber
I used to be puzzled and sceptical about the idea that certain foods heat you. I thought it was metaphorical. But now I think it is practical.

I have noticed that I often feel cold when tired and hungry. After eating I feel warm.

 Obviously an iced drink is cooling. Cucumber is liquid and refreshing and used as lubrication in Victorian style sandwiches in summer to counter the gluey effect of white bread.

Back to masala. Hot spice. Hot in the sense of spicy, hot in the sense of raising your temperature.

Why is Indian food hot and spicy? Why drink hot tea in hot countries?

Admittedly, in Spain they tend to serve soups and drinks tepid. What about warm beer? Iced drinks? In Singapore people often ask for tepid water. (I hate hot drinks made with boiling water which burns me. I add cold milk to coffee. It adds calcium the chance of burning your mouth is reduced.

The English tourists to Spain like their food to have been heated to a high enough temperature to kill the bugs. That is what we are used to at home and what we are expect. Tepid food suggests to us that it has not been sufficiently heated to kill germs, that it has been heated but left lying around, exposed to flies, while we, the customers have been kept waiting, ignored by so-called waiters, that neither the cook nor the serving staff have any concern for the freshness of the food, or the physical and mental health of the customers.

When the British and Americans visit Singapore, Indian and and other Asian countries, it takes some adjusting to understand the varieties of temperatures of food offered.

One member of my family refuses ice in Coca Cola because it waters down the flavour and enables the staff to pass off a small glass as a large one.

I would reject ice on the grounds that ice in India and Thailand and Singapore has been found to be contaminated in the past. On one occasion the bride and wedding party were all sick after drinking drinks made with ice from a supplier who had re-used ice previously used to cool raw fish.

So, up to you, hot or not? At least you now know that garam means hot.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, researcher, author, speech writer, speech trainer, speaker.