咖啡
kāfēi · HSK 3
coffee
☕ 咖啡 = phonetic loan: kā-fēi mimics English coffee
Both characters use the 口 mouth radical to flag a foreign sound-borrowing. 咖 (kā) + 啡 (fēi) were coined in the 19th century purely to transliterate coffee; neither carries its own meaning here.
kā fēi · HSK 2
coffee
☕ 咖啡 = phonetic loan from English 'coffee' (kā-fēi)
Both characters use the 口 (mouth) radical to flag them as sound-only borrowings. 咖 (kā) + 啡 (fēi) together approximate the English word 'coffee' — pure transliteration, no semantic meaning in the components.