{"id":4447,"date":"2015-10-13T17:32:33","date_gmt":"2015-10-13T16:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/?p=4447"},"modified":"2026-08-25T13:15:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T12:15:46","slug":"the-language-of-chocolate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/the-language-of-chocolate","title":{"rendered":"The Language of Chocolate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ah chocolate, that little sinful delight that you can pretty much find in every corner of the globe. Eat it, drink it, wear it or even play with it, you simply can&#8217;t get away from it. Since it&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chocolateweek.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">National Chocolate Week<\/a> I was curious to find out where the word &#8216;chocolate&#8217; actually comes from.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately there isn&#8217;t really a concrete answer that states its exact origins. Some believe it comes from the Aztec (Nahuatl) word &#8216;<em>chocolatl<\/em>&#8216; which referred to a substance produced from the seeds of the cacau tree. Others believe the Spanish coined it from the Mayan word &#8216;<em>chocol<\/em>&#8216; (hot) and the Aztec word &#8216;<em>atl<\/em>&#8216; (water) when early explorers came across a beverage made from the seeds.<\/p>\n<p>It only goes to show how far back the beginnings of chocolate as we know it are embedded into our history. If you&#8217;re looking for interesting ways to use the word chocolate in other languages, here are a few to start you off with.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-4455\" style=\"margin-top: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;\" src=\"https:\/\/eurotalk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/chocolateweek02.jpg\" alt=\"chocolateweek02\" width=\"2000\" height=\"1333\" \/><\/p>\n<p>If you ever come across something or someone that you find utterly useless, then the expression &#8216;<em>as much use as a chocolate teapot<\/em>&#8216; might come in handy. Science has even proven <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thenakedscientists.com\/HTML\/experiments\/exp\/how-useless-is-a-chocolate-teapot\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">how useless a chocolate teapot really is<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In French, you might use the phrase &#8216;<em>tablettes de chocolat<\/em>&#8216; to refer to a particularly svelte and toned looking man. There are some things about the French language that I just love.<\/p>\n<p>&#8216;<em>Es el chocolate del loro<\/em>&#8216; in Spanish literally translates to &#8216;the parrot&#8217;s chocolate&#8217;, but is in fact referring to the insignificance of a small amount of money when compared to a much larger amount. I&#8217;m still trying to work out where the parrot comes into this, though.<\/p>\n<p>And if you find yourself in a particularly confusing situation that defies all sense of logic and cohesion, don&#8217;t hesitate to swap the English idiom &#8216;it&#8217;s all Greek to me&#8217; for the Dutch &#8216;daar kan ik geen chocola van maken&#8217; which translates to &#8216;I can&#8217;t make chocolate of that&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>Do you know any other chocolate based expressions? Do let us know! I&#8217;m sure they&#8217;ll be positively delicious&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Safia<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ah chocolate, that little sinful delight that you can pretty much find in every corner of the globe. Eat it,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[24,3],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-4447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fun-stuff","category-languagelearning","tag-culture"],"acf":[],"lang":"en","translations":{"en":4447},"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":24,"label":"Fun stuff"},{"value":3,"label":"Language Learning"}],"post_tag":[{"value":46,"label":"culture"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"Richard Howeson","author_link":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/en\/news\/author\/richard"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":24,"name":"Fun stuff","slug":"fun-stuff","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":24,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":87,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":24,"category_count":87,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Fun stuff","category_nicename":"fun-stuff","category_parent":0},{"term_id":3,"name":"Language Learning","slug":"languagelearning","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":3,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":254,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":3,"category_count":254,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Language Learning","category_nicename":"languagelearning","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":[{"term_id":46,"name":"culture","slug":"culture","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":46,"taxonomy":"post_tag","description":"","parent":0,"count":48,"filter":"raw"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10434,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4447\/revisions\/10434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}