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I really like the word "tea" across languages. Japanese - cha Chinese - chá Thailand - chā Russian - чай (chay) Turkish - Çay (chai) Sri Lanka Sinhala - ත
by rabboRubble 9y ago
I really like the word "tea" across languages.
Japanese - cha
Chinese - chá
Thailand - chā
Russian - чай (chay)
Turkish - Çay (chai)
Sri Lanka Sinhala - තේ (tē)
Arabic - شاي (shay)
German - tee
English - tea!
You have to go out of your way to find a language where "tea" deviates from those patterns.
- eridius 9y agoKorean - 차 (cha)
- interfixus 9y agoYes, the absurdity of the package in my cupboard, claiming to contain "chai tea". But your list is a latter-day pattern, the word exported from China together with the product itself.
- trynumber9 9y agoBut that's because the Europeans all adopted the word later. From etymology online: The distribution of the different forms of the word in Europe reflects the spread of use of the beverage. The modern English form, along with French thé, Spanish te, German Tee, etc., derive via Dutch thee from the Amoy form, reflecting the role of the Dutch as the chief importers of the leaves (through the Dutch East India Company, from 1610). Meanwhile, Russian chai, Persian cha, Greek tsai, Arabic shay, and Turkish çay all came overland from the Mandarin form.
- rabboRubble 9y agoYeah, you are right on with that observation. You prompted me to find out from where the VOC imported their tea. Apparently the initial source was Macao which spoke Cantonese. In modern day Canton and Putonghua words for tea are near indisguishable, so perhaps the Cantonese word for tea circa 1600 was quite like the current Putonhua word for tea. Had VOC sourced their tea from Sri Lanka, our word for tea might be dramatically different. In Tamil, tea is called தேநீர் (tēnīr) http://www.mightyleaftea.be/history-of-tea?___store=uk&___from_store=nl http://www.mightyleaftea.be/history-of-tea?___store=uk&___fr... edit: tea not teat
- lacampbell 9y agoFrom wikipedia Starting in the early seventeen century, the Dutch played a dominant role in the early European tea trade via the Dutch East India Company.[18] The Dutch borrowed the word for "tea" (thee) from Min Chinese, either through trade directly from Fujian or Formosa where they had established a port, or from Malay traders in Bantam, Java. Also interesting speculation as to whether the chinese themselves got it the word from speakers of austro-asiatic languages living in southwest china. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea#Etymology
- icebraining 9y agoInterestingly, we the Portuguese are the exception, using Chá despite being at the Western extreme of the continent: http://i.imgur.com/M4vrWr1.png http://i.imgur.com/M4vrWr1.png Which probably means we got it earlier thanks to our trips to India and China in the 1500s, but then failed to capitalize on its sale to the rest of Europe.
- jacobolus 9y agoAs common words go, this one isn’t that old though. Dates from the late 1st millennium, and has mostly been spread around in the past 500 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea I think it’s similar with other products originating largely from a single source, e.g. “chocolate”, “ramen”, “tofu”, “wine”, “cashmere”, “curry”, “khaki”, “shampoo”, ...
- ajross 9y agoBut nothing is that simple. Chocolate got mixed up, for example. It's an aztec compound word for the drink made from the plant (xocolatl == "bitter water", per wikipedia). The original term for the plant itself in the sense we use it was the unrelated mayan word cacao.
- schoen 9y agoI used to have a folk etymology for chocolate as cacao + lait (or latte), which feels very plausible despite being historically incorrect!
- nandemo 9y agoFor some values of "plausible"? I'm pretty sure pre-Colombian mayans and aztecs didn't consume animal milk, as they hadn't domesticated cows, sheeps or goats.
- avz 9y ago> You have to go out of your way to find a language where "tea" deviates from those patterns. Well, there you go: Lithuanian: arbata, https://translate.google.com/#en/lt/tea https://translate.google.com/#en/lt/tea Polish: herbata, https://translate.google.com/#en/pl/tea https://translate.google.com/#en/pl/tea Aymara: pulu, https://ay.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulu https://ay.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulu
- iagooar 9y agoYet in Polish the word "czaj" also exists and it means a very strong tea. Herbata seems to come from Latin, as it relates to herbs.
- schoen 9y agoWikipedia says that the -ta in Lithuanian and Polish is from Latin thea, from the phrase herba thea ('tea herb'), so there is still a morpheme in common with the other languages in this case!
- rabboRubble 9y agoI think this is from New Latin, not Latin Latin.
- schoen 9y agoIt's funny to think that the etymology of Latin thea probably runs through Dutch! Definitely New Latin.
- kruczek 9y agoInteresting, I never actually encountered "czaj" used to describe tea. From a quick search it seems to be either prison slang, or a word used in eastern Poland, coming from Russia. And then there's "czajnik" for teapot.
- fishnchips 9y ago
- lacampbell 9y agoThey all derive from two sources Mandarin - chá Hokkien - tê
- rabboRubble 9y agoVery cool about the Hokkien angle. I have near zero exposure to Hokkien and didn't realize the cha2 / te difference between the 2 dialects. Thank you! I've always been puzzled by the shift from the "ch" to "t" sound as the word migrated westward. I had always attributed the shift to a natural progressive change from language to language. Having two different original sources makes much more sense!
- lacampbell 9y agoSomeone else pointed out that the reason there's a cha/te divide in Eurasia is become some countries got it via maritime tried from coastal regions where Hokkien was spoken, and others got it overland from the interior, where Mandarin was more common.
- rmetzler 9y agoYou should lookup the word for pineapple in other languages. English is the outlier, most (or all, IIRC) call it "ananas".
- ino 9y agoAlso 'piña' in spanish and 'abacaxi' in brazilian portuguese. Abacaxi is such a fun word to say out loud.
- petecox 9y agoNames in Spanish for fruit & veg vary greatly by country. I'm pretty sure 'ananas' is still pineapple in parts of South America, where it's a key ingredient in a Chilean cocktail. furthermore - palta = avocado, durazno = peach, choclo = corn etc - some of the words that are completely different from their Peninsular Spanish equivalents.
- beagle3 9y agoSimilar to Pineapple which is basically "ananas" in every language except English (pineapple) and Spanish (piña); though "ananas" is also accepted, but rarely used, in Spanish, so English stands alone. [0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/134659/why-is-pineapple-in-english-but-ananas-in-all-other-languages https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/134659/why-is-pi...
- captainmuon 9y agoExcept in Austrian German, where "Ananas" can strangely mean "strawberry" :-)
- taejo 9y agoThe scientific name for garden strawberries Fragaria × ananassa. They are hybrids of F. virginiana and F. chiloensis (both of which come from the parts of the Americas referred to in their names). They apparently have a pineappley aroma in comparison to their native European cousins, F. vesca.
- marcosdumay 9y agoIt's "abacaxi" in Brazil, although I guess it's "ananás" in Portugal.
- ruste 9y agoPersian - چای (Chai)
- hliyan 9y agoInterestingly, it's the British who introduced tea to Sri Lanka, so the Sinhalese word තේ (tē) is an adaptation. So is very possibly the word for pineapple: ananas - annasi (අන්නාසි). However, the following similarities are probably due to the common roots of Latin and Sanskrit: English/Latin - Sinhalese Nose - Naas Dental - Danta Three - Three Regina (Queen) - Regina There are many others... Words adapted from Sinhalese to English: Anaconda - Henakandaya (හෙණකඳයා) (Means "Massive Body")
- Sunset 9y agoThe Bulgarian form is the same as the russian чай (chay).