Why not Liofiliza kafo ?

It always surprises me when I hear of couples who use Esperanto in their domestic life. It seems to me that they must either not talk about certain things, or use ad hoc terms, or have a constant headache as to how to name certain things in Esperanto.

The pattern of usage for Esperanto means that there all sorts of things from everyday life, which don't have regular names. Sometimes the naming of an article is obvious, but often not.

Maybe 'instant coffee' is a good example of this difficulty, maybe not. I can't recall ever hearing another Esperantist name this in conversation, but perhaps tujpreta is an established usage.

However nobody could argue that there are Esperanto supermarkets. Even the word for supermarket is somewhat problematic with the variants supervendejo, supermarkto, superbazaro, ĉiovendejo, magazenego and so on all having some claim.

Incidentally, logically, superbazaro is a shopping mall or complex, not an individual supermarket. In a bazaro you pay many times as you shop to individual shopkeepers or stall-holders, there is not one check-out for the whole complex.

EDIT: there are no hits in the Tekstaro for 'tujpret', 7 for 'supervendej' and 4 for 'superbazar' 2 for 'ĉiovendej'. Wells gives solvebla for instant (coffee etc)

Vespero_:I'd probably just go with "tujkafo" (based off of "tujmesaĝilo" = "instant messenger")

But I don't drink coffee.

That was both my guess and my reasoning when responding to a lesson at Duolingo.com. However, time, circumstance and technology got us to the word 'tujmesaĝilo' for Instant Messenger, and that itself probably started out as an AOL (America On-Line) brand title.

Instant Coffee, however, has been around as a name for a long time. Someone else posted that 'solvebla kafo' is in a dictionary by Wells, but I did not find it in the Teach Yourself Esperanto Dictionary, by J.C. Wells. However, I did notice in that dictionary that the formal sense of 'instant' that we mean is given as 'tuja,' and so I like the concatenated version 'tujkafo' even more.

Some have suggested that it be 'tujpreta kafo,' which is roughly 'instantly-ready coffee.' I admit that it makes the meaning more clear in relation to the process of making coffee. My choice, 'tujkafo,' doesn't make any sense without guessing process as part of the meaning.

I suppose that Esperantistoj kiuj trinkas kafon decidos.

sudanglo:But suppose you had to translate dialogue in a novel or film.

- Would you like a coffee? I'm afraid we only have instant.

- Instant will be fine.

I'd probably translate it something like

-Ĉu vi volas kafon? Bedaŭrinde ni havas nur tujpretan.

-Tujpreta estos bona*.

The adjective would be understood to refer to the aforementioned "kafo" in this context; certainly nothing out of the ordinary there. And if "tujpreta" is already a common term for "instant", it would be even more readily understood. But as I haven't been to any Esperanto events as of yet, and don't care for coffee, I can't speak from experience on that point.

*(well, I would probably say "Tujpreta sufiĉe bonos", but I'm an ornery cuss! )