Breaking Down Breakfast Across Languages

 What is Breakfast?

Ok, that’s an easy question with an easy answer. Breakfast is the first meal of the day. People have spent irretrievable hours arguing about what constitutes ‘breakfast food’ but we all mostly agree that breakfast itself is the morning meal or at the very least it's the first food of the day even if it’s not full meal.

Cool, but where does the word breakfast come from? Well, in English we can break the word down pretty easily.

Breakfast. 

Break fast. 

To break one’s fast. 

Fasting Breaking

This actually makes a lot of sense since sleep is often the longest period of time we don’t eat. So in the minds of English speakers hundreds of years ago, you were indeed breaking your fast with the first thing you ate in the morning. 

This is a pretty straightforward but what’s really nifty is that you can see this same formation in other European languages.

Spanish des + ayuno el desayuno

‘un’ ‘fast’

Catalan des dejuni desdejuni

‘un’ ‘fast’

Dutch breek vasten breekvasten*

‘break’ 'to fast'

*Today breekvasten has almost completely fallen out of use in favor of ontbijt

The idea of breakfast having some relationship to fasting can be found outside European languages. In Arabic, among the many words for breakfast, several are related to the verb  faṭara which means 'to break a fast' and the noun fiṭr which refers to the breaking of a fast. As such, breakfast names include faṭūr and fuṭūr and the meal one takes during the Ramadan fast is known as 'iftār. And it’s no coincidence that it’s also another word for breakfast. 

In Hausa, the terms kárìn kùmállóo and karya kumallo express the same idea with kùmállóo being the word for a fast.

Fasting Breaking +

French follows the same pattern of ‘breaking a fast’ but with some extra steps added in. The world déjeuner does have the same etymology as Spanish desayuno and Catalan desdejuni.

French dé + jeuner le déjeuner

‘un’ ‘fast’

However, anyone whose familiar with standard French knows that the word déjeuner actually means lunch rather than breakfast. While much of Wallonia and Francophone Canada kept the sensible fast-breaking word déjeuner to mean breakfast, metropolitan French has once again decided to be frustrating. The term déjeuner moved from meaning 'breakfast' to filling in as the word for 'lunch.' In response, the word for breakfast became petit déjeuner, which could be translated as ‘little lunch.’

Side Tangent

In a weird twist of fate the word dinner, which comes from the Old French word disner is derived from the same root as déjeuner, desdejuni and desayuno. This means that for the people of France, the three major meals petit déjeuner, déjeuner, and dîner all come from the same root word that means ‘break a fast.’

The construction of a small lunch meaning breakfast is mimicked in Romanian which borrowed the word for lunch dejun and then put in the native word for small mic to make breakfast, thus mic dejun.

So, we have a handful of languages that connect breakfast with fast breaking. And in a few languages, the fast-breaking word became lunch and breakfast was ‘little lunch.’

But how else is breakfast named?

Morning Meal, Morning Food

Looking around the world, there’s a huge number of languages where ‘breakfast' is just a combination of a word for ‘morning’ or ‘early’ and a word for ‘food’ ‘meal’ or ‘portion.’ And this construction is found in languages across the world and across different language families. It can also be found in several signed languages like ASL.

Indo-European

Danish morgen     +    mad morgenmad

'morning'            'food'

West Frisian moarn     +    iten moarniten

'morning'            'food'

German früh     +    Stück Frühstück

'early'                'piece'

Old English morgen     +    mete morgenmete

'morning'            'meal'

Finno-Ugric

Estonian hommik         + eine         hommikueine

'morning'         'food/snack'

Finnish aamu + pala         aamupala

'morning'         'portion'

Kildin Saami īnces’ + pierrk īnces’-pierrk

'morning'         'meal'

Sino-Tibetan

Burmese măne’     +     sa             mănetsa

‘morning’     ‘meal’

Hokkien chá     +     tǹg / tùiⁿ      chá-tǹg / chá-tùiⁿ

‘morning’     ‘meal’

Mandarin  zǎo             +       fàn      zǎofàn

‘early’     ‘meal/rice’

Turkic

Azeri                səhər + yeməyi     səhər yeməyi

'morning'         'food'

Yakut sarsıardaaŋı     + ahılık     sarsıardaaŋı ahılık

'morning) 'meal/food'

Tuvan ertengi         + çem     ertengi çem

'morning) 'meal'

Chuvash irkhi + apat     irkhi apat

'morning'         'meal'

Naturally, there’s also a whole swath of languages that make the same combination but put the food/meal part first.

Hawaiian ‘aina + kakahiaka     ‘aina kakahiaka

‘meal’ ‘morning’

Hebrew arukhát         + bóker     arukhát bóker

‘meal’ ‘morning’

Lingala bilei         + ya tongo     bilei ya tongo

‘meal’ ‘of morning’

Malagasy sakàfo         + maràina     sakàfo maràina

      ‘meal’ ‘morning’

Swahili chukula         + cha asubuhi     chukala asubuhi

‘food’ ‘morning’

Vietnamese bữa (ăn)         + sáng     bữa (ăn) sáng

‘meal’ ‘morning’

Khmer aahaa + peil prɨk     aahaa peil prɨk

‘food’ ‘morning time’

Thai aa-hǎan-         + cháao     aa-hǎan-cháao

‘food/meal’ ‘morning’

Morning Rice

Sometimes the part of the word that means ‘food’ can refer to something more specific, namely rice. You can see this a lot in East and Southeast Asia.

Japanese     asa + gohan asagohan

Korean     achim bap         achimbap

    ‘morning’ ‘rice’ ‘breakfast’

Laos khao + sao         khao sao

Lü ẋaw² tsaw² ẋaw²-tsaw²

Thai kâao cháao kâao-cháao

‘rice’ (of) ‘morning’ ‘breakfast’

In a similar vein, there are several languages spoken in and around the Philippines with words for breakfast that have to do with left-over food, usually rice that's often called bahaw or baaw. This would take on prefixes and act as a word for breakfast.

‘left overs/left over rice’ ‘breakfast’

Bikol Central bahaw         pamahaw

Bisaya bahaw         pamahaw

Cebuano bahaw         pamahaw

Hiligaynon bahaw         pamahaw

Ilocano baaw pamahaw

Tagabawa bahaw              pamahaw

Tagalog bahaw         pamahaw

Waray-Waray bahaw         pamahaw

Adding a Morpheme to the Morning

There are also a fair number of languages that name breakfast by just slapping a morpheme on the word for ‘morning’ or ‘early’ and calling it a day. Normally these appear as suffixes that make something a noun.

‘morning’ suffix     ‘breakfast

Slovak raň         + ajky     raňajky

Hungarian reggel + i     reggeli

Persian sobh + âne     sobhâne

Yup’ik unaku + taq     unuakutaq

Several Slavic languages got the word for breakfast from the same proto-word that combines a prefix/preposition meaning ‘after’ ‘beyond’ or ‘during’  a word meaning ‘morning’ or ‘dawn’ and a nominalizing suffix. So it’s kind of like the 'after-daybreak-thing.'

        prefix ‘morning’ ‘breakfast’

Russian         za utro zavtrak

Slovene         za jútro zājtrk

Serbro-Croation za jutro zàjutrak

Some languages combine the terms for morning with other terms.

Wuhan Mandarin guò         + zǎo         guòzǎo

        ‘cross, pass’ ‘morning’

In modern Greek, the word proïnó comes the from the word proïnós which means related to morning (prōi). So the term roughly translates to thing related to the morning or 'morning thing.'

In Korean, one of the words for breakfast is achim, which is also the word for morning. The specific meal is often understood through context.

The Morning Drink

While a lot of languages name breakfast after the first food of the day, sometimes the word comes from the most common breakfast drink in an area.

For example breakfast terminology comes from coffee in Turkish, Brazilian Portuguese, and Luxembourgish.

Language coffee > breakfast literal translation

Turkish         kahve > kahvaltı ‘before the coffee’

B. Portuguese         café         > café de manhã ‘coffee of the morning’

Luxembourgish Kaffi > Kaffi ‘coffee’

Conversely, the first meal of the day is all about tea in other languages like Mongolian and Tibetan.

Language tea > breakfast

Tibetan ja > zhogs ja ‘morning tea’

Ket sajdo > qonokssajdo ‘morning tea’

Mongolian tsay > öglööniy tsay ‘morning tea’

Persian čāy > čāy-i subh ‘tea of the morning’

Taking a bite into…something

For some languages, breakfast is just about biting into something or eating a bit. In Dutch, the most common word for breakfast ontbijt comes from a verb that once meant to bite or to put one's teeth into something. Then ontbijt became the thing bitter into (similar to German Imbiss), but then the meaning narrowed into just things bitten into in the morning time.

The Latin word admordere, which also refers to biting into something (ad ‘into’ + mordere ‘bite’) turned into the Galician and Asturian words almorzo and almuerzu which are the words for breakfast. This also gave Spanish the world almuerzo which means lunch.

Similarly, Bulgarian has zakuska whose root -kus- refers to biting. And one word in Kannada for breakfast tiṇḍi comes from the verb tinnu meaning ‘to eat.’

Hunger and Mouths

It makes sense that some words for breakfast are connected to mouths, hunger and satisfying it.

Indonesian has sarapan which is a noun formed from the verb sarap which means ‘to eat a little, to stave off the feeling of hunger.’ Likewise the Basque term gosari has roots that mean ‘to lessen hunger.’ And the Persian word for breakfast nâštâ comes from the concept of hunger.

Golf Arabic has the word ryūg which comes from the old plural of rīq meaning saliva, creating the metaphor of what happens when you’re hungry.

One Swahili term for breakfast is kiamsha kinywa. This connects the words for ‘waking’ amka and ‘mouth’ kinywa to form the metaphor that makes breakfast.

Other terms for Breakfast

As far-reaching as these breakfast formations of fast-breaking, morning food, and morning drinks are there are few other ways that languages formed their breakfast words.

The Italian word for the first meal of the day is colazione. The word comes from the Latin collatio which means something like ‘putting together’ ‘bring together’ or ‘coming together’ and has the same root as the word collate. This is because it originally was the name of the meal that the monks ate together after the evening meeting during which time they would all come together.

There are also plenty of languages where the word for breakfast is just kind of unknown or lost to time.

A lot of Slavic languages have something similar to the Polish word śniadanie. This definitely comes from the Polish verb śniadać ‘to have breakfast’, but the origins of that word are unclear. Some linguists think is has something to do with an old verb like *êdati which means to eat, but no one is certain.

Czech snídaně

Belorussian snedanne

Ukrainian snìdanok

Lower Sorbian snědanje

One of the Latin words for breakfast prandium also has an unclear etymology, although there’s a lot of support for the ‘pr’ part being related to earliness or first (like prime) and the second part being related to edere ‘to eat.’

Breakfast Word Borrowing

Aside from combining different combinations of fasting, breaking, eating, rice, and drinks, a lot of languages just borrowed the word for breakfast from a neighbor. Naturally, these words changed to match the phonetics and grammar of the borrowing language as well as due to time. 

Today you can find plenty of direct borrowings from the English word breakfast.

Afrikaans brekfis

Irish         bricfeasta

Scots Gaelic bracaist

Welsh brecwast

Tok Pisin         brakpas

Tokia brakpas

Likewise, from German Frühstück, there are  words in Yiddish, Rusyn, and Latvian. 

Rusyn frystik

Yiddish frishtik

Latvian brokastis the fr cluster changing to a br

The Spanish words almuerzo have been borrowed as terms for breakfast.

From almuerzo

Kapampangan almusal

Pangasinan almusal

Tagalog almusal

Tagalog almuwerso (now considered dated)

For many of the languages in South and Central Asia, one of the words for breakfast comes from the Persian nâštâ.

South Asia

Hindi         nāśtā

Gujarati         nāsto

Kannada         nāṣṭā

Malayalam nāśta

Marathi         nāśtā

Mauritian Creole nasta

Rajasthani nāstau

Tamil nāstā

Urdu nāśtā

Central Asia

Tajik nošto

Uzbek nonushta

Uyghur nāśtā

No Patterns only Tendencies

As with any linguistic trend, there’s no one-size-fits-all rule, pattern, or paradigm to how languages form their words for breakfast. Moreover, plenty of languages like Thai, Persian and Korean have multiple terms for designating the first meal of the day.

That being said, it’s still worth pointing out there are definitely some strong tendencies that can be found in the word breakfast. And I think that's neat.

Lucía Golluscio, Adriana Fraguas, Fresia Mellico. 2009. Mapudungun vocabulary.

In: Haspelmath, Martin & Tadmor, Uri (eds.)

World Loanword Database.

Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 1412entries.

(Available online at http://wold.clld.org/vocabulary/41, Accessed on 2024-09-24.)