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Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
- angrygoat 9y agoAt least in Australia, "chai" is on sale in cafes meaning Masala chai, a mix of leaf tea and Indian spices and herbs. And then you've got the "chai latte", like a regular latte but with "chai" instead of espresso. Amusing weirding of language - it should really be a "masala"!
- gcb0 9y agoif you want to argue correctness, it should be "spicy" since Australia speaks english :)
- oasisbob 9y agoTranslate garam masala next. :)
- mseebach 9y agoHot or warm spices? It's a language-weirding in itself that the quality of having spices means that something is hot. Plenty of spices (most, really?) aren't hot. Too many places, especially in Europe, fail at making spicy food, they just make burning hot (or bland) food.
- toomanybeersies 9y agoExcept that chai lattes are usually made with sickly sweet syrup, rather than powder. I must admit though, I do have a soft spot for dirty chai, which is a chai latte with a shot of espresso.
- oasisbob 9y agoSame in many parts of the US, except it's taken one step further with "chai tea" - even in big-budget advertisements by chains who should know better. Seeing or hearing "chai tea" drives my Indian wife up the wall everytime.
- Cyberdog 9y agoI'm the type that gets triggered by people who enter their "PIN number" into an "ATM machine," so I can relate.
- kerneltime 9y ago+1 Would you like some coffee latte with milk and cappuccino with foam with your chai tea latte order :-P
- protonfish 9y agoMasala means "blend of spices" "Garam masala" is a blend of hot spices, "chai masala" is meant for making tea, In the US, Chai usually refers to Indian style tea with milk and spices. Source: I've worked with a lot of Indian people.
- seshagiric 9y agoAs an Indian I want to put this on record, the spiced tea is absolutely obnoxious. We do not drink it. There is a different one flavored with ginger or cardamon, which people like and tastes so much better than 'masala chai' sold in US etc.
- thekingshorses 9y agoIndian here too. We do drink masala chai in India (Gujarat).
- washadjeffmad 9y agoWe have a few who do garam chai with their chai pani, too.
- lenocinor 9y agoUnless you're talking about movies. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masala_film https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masala_film
- cardiffspaceman 9y agoThe call center beverages seen in "Slumdog Millionaire" appeared to me to be some sort of hot milk+tea beverage. At the time based on sources I had already read, I thought this would be spiced. I remember that in the movie, each serving was in a decent size drinking glass of about 10-12 oz and the glass was wrapped with what appeared to be a paper napkin. For some reason this is stuck in my mind.
- arketyp 9y agoThis adds a new dimension to the chai latte as a token of globalization. Breaking borders.
- ferreirix 9y agoThere are exceptions since the Portuguese brought tea from India to Europe by sea, and still they call it "cha"
- mrob 9y agoIt's mentioned in the article. "And the Portuguese traded not through Fujian but Macao, where chá is used."
- trextrex 9y agoRight, this was probably because it was already called "cha" in India by then, and the Portugese didn't have direct contact with the people speaking Min Nan Chinese, but rather the Indians who used the Sinitic version of the name.
- Narishma 9y agoIt's addressed in the article.
- ZenoArrow 9y agoSome people in England also use "cha" as slang for tea. It's not widely used, but it is present. https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/18152/british-usage-of-cha-char-or-chai-to-mean-tea https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/18152/british-us...
- mhandley 9y agoLikely that influence comes from when India was part of the British Empire. Lots of Indian-derived words made it into British English.
- gerdesj 9y agoPyjamas and bungalow are examples of borrow words from India. India has rather a lot of languages and I don't think you can lump them all into "Indian". "Char" as in "cuppa char?" is the usual spelling (would you like a cup of tea?) According to this: http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/cup-char http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/cup-char it is likely that "char" is derived from Chinese (another country with rather a lot of languages - would the real Chinese please stand up!)
- yetihehe 9y agoPolish language has "herbata", which is a third one, from herbs.
- mziel 9y agoIt comes from "herba thea" (herbal tea) so you could argue that it should still be classified under "tea" origin.
- Tade0 9y agoDerived from the latin herba thea ("herbal tea").
- kornakiewicz 9y agoThat's partially true. It's from "herba thea", so basically redundantly added the "herb" part to the common tea name.
- Mikeb85 9y agoA steeped beverage from non-tea herbs isn't tea.
- kybernetikos 9y agoThis is not true from a language/ word usage point of view. E.g https://www.amazon.co.uk/dandelion-tea/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Adandelion%20tea https://www.amazon.co.uk/dandelion-tea/s?ie=UTF8&page=1&rh=i...
- kriro 9y agoWell yes the term tea is used "in the wrong way" a lot and one could argue that it is common enough that it's the right usage these days (language evolves etc.). But technically tea is only from camelia sinensis varieties. So the "herbal teas" should technically be called something else like tisane.
- brigade 9y ago
- Fiahil 9y agoAnd what about South America ?
- kawsper 9y agoIt can also refer to food like lunch or dinner which the danish school system did not prepare me for in their english lessons, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_(meal)#Tea_as_the_evening_meal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_(meal)#Tea_as_the_evening_...
- jwarren 9y agoAs a Londoner who moved north, it continually confuses me too. "What are you having for tea?" "Oh, err... just milk thanks"
- skety 9y agoYeah, and dinner being used for lunch while tea is used for dinner. Not confusing at all.
- _puk 9y agoAt least you know where you stand with supper, right?!
- pbhjpbhj 9y agoYeah, and with breakfast, cause that's always in the morning ... like a nice afternoon wedding breakfast.
- Khoth 9y agoWell, that depends. In Scotland, "supper" generally means "with chips".
- schrodinger 9y agoAnd which meaning of "chips"?
- nicky0 9y ago
- apt-get 9y agoMoroccan arabic actually uses both word: the classical "shay" and "atay", which is more common.
- taejo 9y agoKind of strange that this refers to "Sinitic" contrasting to "Min Nan" when Min Nan is a Sinitic language.
- tsing 9y agoJust learnt that "Min Nan" dialect can be referred to "Hokkien"
- jpatokal 9y ago"Hokkien" is an approximation of how "Fujian" is pronounced in Min Nan, which in turn means "Southern Min" (dialect/language). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Min https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Min
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoSingaporeans and Malaysians almost always call the language "Hokkien" - at least when speaking English. "Min Nan" seems like a term only linguists use.
- juji 9y agoer sadfgadfg asd
- juji 9y agoa sdfas dasdf asdf
- richardknop 9y agoIn Slovak tea is caj (ignoring diacritics, or "čaj" as written properly, it's just I have English keyboard and diacritics is hard to use on it). And it’s pronounced as “chaj”. So very similar to cha. And it turns out Slovakia is a landlocked country. Just one data point but seems to be additional evidence.
- bitcoinusername 9y agoIn Croatia it is "čaj". Although it has a coast on Adriatic and coastal people use "čaj" as a word too, despite Italian influence (which uses tè for tea). Even people on islands that were influenced hugely by the Republic of Venice.
- smcl 9y agoI'm curious - was the Croat language (or some parent of it) pretty predominant during the times of the Republic of Venice? Or is that a "new" thing after the unification of Yugoslavia, and prior to that Italian (or some Venetian dialect) was widely spoken?
- bitcoinusername 9y agoPeople living on the island Hvar speak quite a unique version of Croatian. The Venice influence is huge there, graveyard is filled with gravestones of 16th+ century elite. I sometimes find them hard to understand due to heavy usage of words with Italian roots. But their grammar is equivalent to Croatian grammar. They also use the word "čaj". I'd say Croatian as a language was popular and was heavily used on coastal areas even before Italian influence, and after too.
- Keyframe 9y agoIt was predominant. Only difference was that latin was predominant in written form until 16th century, after which there was some kind of standardization of the language on one main dialect (we have three) and a movement(s) towards written croatian as well.
- 9y ago
- ekianjo 9y agoTea to Japan was certainly not "by land". I know they want to make it into a simple rule, but that's just not as simple as they pretend.
- _0nac 9y agoThe friendly article notes that both Japan and Korea likely acquired the word long before the Silk Road. Relevant random factoid: it's possible to tell when many Chinese words were imported into Japan based on the pronunciation, which varies based on where the Chinese capital (and hence the ruling class dialect) happened to be. See "Onyomi" under https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji.
- ekianjo 9y agoYeah I am aware, I speak Japanese.
- schemathings 9y agoAnd if you're an American in Japan speaking to a Japanese who speaks English they say Chinese alphabet (a literal translation) rather than Kanji (based on my 6 trips there)
- drawnwren 9y agoAren't there also some words in Kanji that don't have Chinese origins? Like 硝子 for example?
- clw8 9y agoI somehow missed that part of the article, but that's not true. Tea is cha in Korean and Japanese, and that pronunciation post-dates Old Chinese. (which is why Min Nan is different, as it preserves numerous features from Old Chinese)
- neffy 9y agoExactly and London working class slang for tea is cha, which I always assumed must have originated at the docks.
- Profan 9y agoThis is an excellent map for the purpose of it, lifted from a bunch of research (shows the words in each individual language and also which language they originated from) http://wals.info/feature/138A#2/25.5/143.6 http://wals.info/feature/138A#2/25.5/143.6
- jhoechtl 9y agoAustria is isolated from sea and the one and only word used to reference that beverage is "Tee" (tea), so we have one exception to the rule.
- awiesenhofer 9y agowell, back then Austria still had sea access via Trieste etc.
- ShirsenduK 9y agoThe local Nepali speaking people of Darjeeling, which is famous its champagne of teas, call it chi-yah. Close to Cha but not quite.
- LesZedCB 9y agosounds really close to me
- njsubedi 9y agoI was about to add this. It's "chi-yaa" almost all over the mountains of Nepal.
- ShirsenduK 9y agoI hear it as ending with yeah! As no one says no to them. :P Although I live in that area and don't drink tea.
- mazerackham 9y agosounds like cha-ye, or tea leaves in Mandarin
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- erebrus 9y agoPortugal imported tea from India way before Macau. That was the whole thing of the sea route to India...
- dark_ph0enix 9y agoWell that and the spices
- phillc73 9y agoAre you sure? I thought the English brought tea to India after stealing it from China in the 19th Century.[1] Was there another source in India which the Portuguese had earlier access to? My initial cursory investigation via Wikipedia seems to indicate China as the initial source.[2] I'd be really interested, from an historical point of view, if this wasn't the case. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3081255-for-all-the-tea-in-china https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3081255-for-all-the-tea-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tea#Portugal_and_Italy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_tea#Portugal_and_It...
- JumpCrisscross 9y agoCharles II, after losing the Battle of Worcester, fled to Europe where he stayed for nine years [1][2]. There he discovered tea. He also discovered Catherine of Braganza, a tea drinker (like most of the Portuguese nobility) whom he married [3]. In 1660 the British monarchy was restored. Charles and Catherine then introduced the custom of tea drinking to the British court. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_England [3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Braganza https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_of_Braganza
- disconnected 9y agoYou're all way off. A pair of Gauls and a Breton (by pure coincidence) brought tea to England. It's all documented in history books such as this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix_in_Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix_in_Britain :)
- gadders 9y agoIn London, "Char" is also slang for tea as in "a cup of char". Looks like there is some overlap. http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/cup-char http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/explore/cup-char
- gerhardi 9y agoAlmost the same goes for the word Restaurant. Everywhere in the world it's almost the same - except in Russia it is pectopah! :)
- DoreenMichele 9y agoFor those who can't read any Russian, or never read that short story where this is the punchline essentially, pectopah is pronounced restoran. It only drops the T, basically.
- ivanhoe 9y agoIt should be really written in upper case, as PECTOPAH, to match the cyrillic letters better :)
- r3bl 9y ago> For those who can't read any Russian That's Cyrillic alphabet, not Russian. Cyrillic is used in other languages as well. I was born in Serbia (which also uses Cyrillic) so I understood the punchline, even though I would hardly say I "read any Russian". It's more of a south and east Slavic thing than it is a Russian thing.
- bzbarsky 9y agoThe reason it drops the T is that the word came to Russian from French (as did so many other words). And the French word "restaurant" is pronounced with a silent 't' at the end, in the typical French way. So the cyrillic rendering of that sound ends up without a 'т' on the end.
- 2T1Qka0rEiPr 9y agoI had just made a pot, sat down to have breakfast and came across this. wonderful!
- skety 9y agoAny Vietnamese know why Vietnam has "tea" in the middle and "cha" in north or south on the map? I spend 2 months in the north then lived for a few month in Saigon. I never came across people using anything other than "trà" (cha).
- favadi 9y agoVietnamese uses both "chè" and "trà". But for some reasons, for things like iced tea, bubble tea we only use "trà". For the traditional tea that serves in a teapot, either is fine.
- skety 9y agoI forgot about chè, thank you for reminding me. this word is also a desert according to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ch%C3%A8
- sondh 9y agoWhat did you mean saying "tea in the middle"? I'm quite sure we Vietnamese only use "chè" or "trà", both variants are basically "cha" I think.
- skety 9y agoSorry if I wasn't clear. Looking at the map, there are 6 dots over Vietnam. The 2 in the middle of Vietnam (around Hue and Danang I guess) are pink, for "te" as opposed to the other one which are blue, for "cha".
- kryachkov 9y agoIn Swedish ”te” is what is usually refeerrd as a tea (in England for example). Herbal tea is ”chai” in Swedish
- metafunctor 9y agoI think “chai” is not really a Swedish word, but a word recently imported by the cafes, signifying some kind of tea-based beverage.
- hashmush 9y agoHerbal tea is örtte (lit. herb + tea). Chai is something different.
- Snortibartfast 9y agoCorrect. When we swedes say "chai" we actually mean "masala chai".
- odiroot 9y agoWhat about "herbata" in Polish then?
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- yarek 9y agoComes from French "herbe" meaning "grass/plant". "Herbe" is also source for English "herb".
- Anderkent 9y agoLatin herba actually, rather than french herbe
- Sean1708 9y agoAccording to this[0] it comes from the Latin for Herbal Tea (herba thea). [0]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/herbata https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/herbata
- seba_dos1 9y agoWhat about "czajnik" (teapot) in Polish then? ;)
- dwyer 9y agoI'm no Chinese expert, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I've found that the Chinese word 茶 (cha) doesn't always necessarily mean tea, but can refer generically to a number of different brewed drinks. e.g. barley tea (大麥茶), ginger tea (薑茶), golden oats tea (燕麥茶), etc. all of which translate to tea, but often contain no tea leaves. It may seem like a nitpick, but when you're in China and order what you expect to be a ginger flavored tea, only to receive a cup of hot water with chopped ginger at the bottom, the distinction can be important. That isn't to say you can't simply order 茶 in China and receive what you would expect, as long as you're expecting green tea. Likewise, if you simply order tea in England, you'll likely receive what the Chinese call 紅茶 (red tea). So in my mind, the words aren't exactly equivalent and I wonder how much the different variations of tea and cha relate to themselves and each other. Edit: Applied jpatokal's correction.
- _0nac 9y agoNit: Western (black) tea is 紅茶 hongcha, lit. "red tea". Chinese black tea refers to fermented teas like pu-erh, which are not the same thing.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- mziel 9y agoInterestingly pu-erh is often referred to as "red tea" in Western countries.
- dagw 9y agoI've only heard "red tea" used to refer to rooibos tea.
- mziel 9y agoSpecifically in Poland: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu-erh https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu-erh Translating the article: Pu-erh (chin. 普洱茶, pǔ’ěr chá) – a kind of tea that is classified as red tea in Poland (black tea in China since the Chinese classify the tea according to the colour of the brew, as opposed to Europeans who classify tea according to the colour of dried leaves).
- sam78yz 9y agoIn my land it's called chai.
- jolesf 9y agoThe map looks so very similar to this modern OBOR project http://mercaturaglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/1200x-1.png http://mercaturaglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/1200x-...
- jvandonsel 9y agoI'd like to see the equivalent map for 'coffee'.
- neaden 9y agoThis article is about the spread of the word coffee, and has a small map at the end. http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/12/10/coffee_cognates_arabic_qahwah_turkish_kahve_and_other_cross_linguistic_borrowings.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2014/12/10/coffee_... It's pretty similar with coffee being almost universal across different languages.
- llamaz 9y agoI'm confused. In Urdu and Hindi it's "chai" (rhymes with eye) not chay (rhymes with stay)
- kingofpandora 9y agoWhat's the confusion?
- llamaz 9y agowhy the article contradicts me and says the tea is "chay" in Hindi and Urdu. I'm not saying the articles wrong, but maybe there's something I'm missing
- grzm 9y agoTranliteration, particularly into English, is fraught with myriad difficulties, the least of which being English orthography itself: there isn't a consistent mapping of sounds to letters. And there are often different systems of transliteration: from Japanese, 茶 (tea) can be transliterated as cha (Hepburn) or tya (Kunrei). I don't read the article and the spellings as prescriptive with respect to pronunciation. I'm not familiar with transliteration of Hindi or Urdu (if someone more knowledgable on the subject would chime in, I'd love to learn a bit more), but I wouldn't read too much into the spellings.
- coolsunglasses 9y agoThey're using an unusual transliteration. "ay" can sound like "eye" in English but it's atypical to use that in transliterations now-a-days.
- int_19h 9y agoThey're using a transliteration that's usual for basically everything but English, the one that assumes common Latin sounds for all the individual letters, and then you just pronounce them one by one.
- codeN 9y agoInterestingly in my home state of Kerala situated in the south western coast of India. Tea is called Chaaya while tea leaves are called Theyila where ila means leaf. The heavy commercial production of tea was started in Kerala only after the British arrived.
- drwu 9y agoI thought `Chaaya` could mean 茶叶(chá'yè), while 茶 is the tea and 叶 are the leaves. The interesting thing here is that the old pronunciation of 茶(cha) was with a long vocal (chaa), whereas 叶(ye) was short and sounded like (ya)
- t1o5 9y agoFellow Keralite here. I can relate to this. Chaaya in Kerala is tea made with tea leaves and milk. Black Tea is called "Kattan Chaaya", literally translates to "strong black tea".
- narvind 9y agoIn south india Tea is called "theneer" in the Tamil language. I wonder if that's because it came from Sri Lanka as opposed to Northern Indian states.
- myth_buster 9y agoIf this fascinates you as it does for me, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies [0] is an equally fascinating read, although there are arguments against the hypothesis. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0393317552 https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0...
- bitwize 9y agoDisproof by counterexample: The Japanese word for tea is cha/ocha, which must surely have arrived by sea (Japan is an island archipelago!).
- mdadashyan 9y agoInteresting enough, in Armenian tea is pronounced as 'tey' and Armenia is surrounded by countries where tea is pronounced as "chay" - Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran.
- tigrank 9y agoCame here to say this.
- dgellow 9y agoBy « the world » I guess they mean « English »
- bodono 9y agoYou didn't read the article obviously.
- kerneltime 9y agoIf you want to read more about history of tea consumption and the role of China, India and England, I recommend reading "For all the team in china: How England Stole the World's Favorite Drink and Changed History" https://www.amazon.com/All-Tea-China-England-Favorite/dp/0143118749/ https://www.amazon.com/All-Tea-China-England-Favorite/dp/014... It helped me understand why green tea is dominant in China vs. black tea in most other places..
- anqurvanillapy 9y agoI’m a native (simplified) Chinese speaker and I found it interesting to see the growth of meanings of tea, from originally a kind of bitter vegetable (荼, as 艹 for vegetable-related, 余 from 涂 for muds), to brewed drinks. For instance if you order a cup of 果茶 (lit. fruit tea), you will end up having a cup of hot water with sugar and cut apple pieces and more. The meaning of the “brewed drink” is IMO really pervasive.
- abritinthebay 9y agoThis is a quite cool breakdown of the differences. One thing it misses is in English (ie, the country) usage there is both. Tea, obviously, is more common but the phrase "a cup of char" is clearly derived from the Chinese and Indian origins. Interestingly it (at least was) primarily a working class phrasing, possibly originating with sea-faring types and dock workers. Of course now the US is confusing matters by making "chai" be ubiquitous for Massala chai, but that's a different matter!
- Ngunyan 9y agoIn the Philippines, it's "cha-a" or "tsaa", which is a counter-example for "cha" being spread across land. The Philippines was consecutively under Spanish and American rule and 99% of Chinese there speak Hokkien/Min-nan yet do not use "te". Seems the same applies to Guam as well.
- aniket_ray 9y agoIf you are interested in the linguistics of food names, might I recommend: Daniel Jurafsky's The Language of Food[1] [1] - https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Language_of_Food_A_Linguist_Reads_th.html?id=7BF0AwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Language_of_Food_A_...
- justaaron 9y agoI'd always understood the T to come from the Taxa (Alfandegaria) imposed upon the blocks the Portuguese imported to Europe and sold to the rest of Europe. Cha (Portuguese) because the Portuguese were not only the first Europeans to reach China by boat, but Japan and India as well, so they used the rightful Asian terms for it, having no other. (back when the Dutch were still pirates hoping to catch a laden Portuguese caravella. FWIW.)
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoIn modern Taiwanese Min Nan, "tê" sounds more like "day" than "tea". Maybe it sounded different in the Min Nan of Fujian a few hundred years ago, or something was "lost in transcription" when the dutch wrote "thee".
- jdmichal 9y agoI don't have any reason not to believe you, but your position does not seem to be backed up by Wikipedia, where /d/ is not listed as a phoneme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Taiwanese_Hokkien https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Taiwanese_Hokkien I have a hypothesis, mostly dependent on the position of a native English speaker, which I have no idea whether you are or not: It's common to not be able to easily distinguish /e/ and /ai/. English does not have the former, and it tends to best match to the /ai/ diphthong, which glides over and would "average" to /e/. It's also common to confuse aspiration and voicing on stops. English initial voiced stops are unaspirated, while initial unvoiced stops are aspirated. Hence, an unvoiced, unaspirated initial stop does not typically occur in English, and can vary in listener interpretation between /t/ or /d/. This article covers voice onset time (VOT) and how voicing and aspiration play into it: http://www.linguisticsnetwork.com/tutorials-aspiration-and-voice-onset-time/ http://www.linguisticsnetwork.com/tutorials-aspiration-and-v... Important note is that VOT is negative for voiced, near zero for unvoiced, and positive for aspirated. This measurable phenomenon backs up the fact that unvoiced, unaspirated sounds are basically in between standard English sounds and why you can get differing interpretations.
- HumanDrivenDev 9y agoYeap you probably hit the nail on the head. I'm a native English speaker and I only know a tiny bit of Hokkien. I really struggle with the aspirated/non-aspirated aspect of many of the consonants. Not sure about the vowel sounds, I found those all reasonably trivial to distinguish. https://mkdict.net/results?query=te%CC%82&page=1&q_type=tw&roman=t&t_dict=moe https://mkdict.net/results?query=te%CC%82&page=1&q_type=tw&r... If you click on the "+" button, there's a voice recording of how to pronounce it. It's from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education. To me it sounds much more like "day" than "tea".
- thaumasiotes 9y agoThe headline seems to imply an overland trade route between China and Japan.
- aamody 9y agoIn a world with the many complexities of language, its refreshing to see an example of a word that's pretty much used in 2 ways almost everywhere!
- nimrod0 9y ago"A few languages have their own way of talking about tea. These languages are generally in places where tea grows naturally, which led locals to develop their own way to refer to it. In Burmese, for example, tea leaves are lakphak." Actually, 'lakphak' is not entirely distinct, and likely related to 'tea,' at least the 'lak' part. The STEDT project has a number of reconstructions across Sino-Tibetan for etyma variously meaning leaf, flat object, and tea: http://stedt.berkeley.edu/~stedt-cgi/rootcanal.pl/etymon/786 http://stedt.berkeley.edu/~stedt-cgi/rootcanal.pl/etymon/786 See also my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134698 The first character associated with a 'bitter herb' that later became specific to tea, 荼 (rlya), is probably a cousin of this 'lak' in modern Burmese.
- expertentipp 9y agoWrong. Herbata if Slav or Commonwealth.
- snaky 9y agoLithuanian - lt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbata Polish - pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbata That's pretty much all exceptions.
- seba_dos1 9y agoApparently it still comes from "herbal tea" (herba thea).
- brepl 9y agoComments like this are what the internet is all about! AFAIK Yugoslavs call tea "čaj" (pronounced... chai!). I have no idea about other Slavs. And if by Commonwealth you mean the British one, I think the biggest member state is India, where "chai" is also the word.
- expertentipp 9y agoI meant Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth:)
- lyrachord 9y ago实际上这是两个字。茶和荼。 http://www.zdic.net/z/22/kx/8336.htm http://www.zdic.net/z/22/kx/8336.htm http://www.zdic.net/z/22/js/837C.htm http://www.zdic.net/z/22/js/837C.htm 《正字通》引《魏了翁集》曰：茶之始，其字爲荼，如《春秋》齊荼、《漢志》荼陵之類。陸、顏諸人，雖已轉入茶音，未嘗輒攺字文。惟陸羽、盧仝以後，則遂易荼爲茶。 荼，普通话tú。现在楚地发音tǘ，往东南地区（闽越）变化，就变成了ti或者tie，再往东南亚地区很接近di或者die。
- etqwzutewzu 9y agoWikipedia has a long page on the etymology of tea and how to say it in various langages in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea
- Keysh 9y agoThere's a more comprehensive version of this story at linguist Dan Jurafsky's web site (it can also be found in the book by Jurafsky mentioned by aniket_ray): http://languageoffood.blogspot.com/2014/08/tea-if-by-sea.html http://languageoffood.blogspot.com/2014/08/tea-if-by-sea.htm...
- Grustaf 9y agoI'm confused, tea and cha are the same word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea
- shakna 9y agoYes, and that's pointed out: > Both versions come from China. > The term cha (茶) > But in the Min Nan variety of Chinese, spoken in the coastal province of Fujian, the character is pronounced te. The same word, originating in China, was brought by trade routes around the world, with slight variations in pronunciation, resulting in two words.
- Grustaf 9y agoThen the article title is very misleading...
- shakna 9y agoI think, from what I can guess, that you are reading the wrong context from the title. We have two words for tea, today, because of one word in the past. Most languages today use those at least one of those two words. It may have been one word in China, but it isn't in the languages that it influenced.
- Grustaf 9y agoI know the history of the word very well, and I understand that clickbait headings have to simplify. But if you want to call CHA and TEA different words, in what sense are TEA and THE (French) the same word? I would say they are either all the same word (how I would phrase it) or all different - since they are in different languages. But this is all semantics, not very interesting really.