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<\/p>\nWhy every language in the world uses the same two words for \u201ctea\u201d and why in fact, that assumption is wrong! (There\u2019s actually only one word for tea!)<\/p>\n
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Our friend and language guru Brian Loo Soon Hua explains all:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n The word \u201ctea\u201d, in almost every language in the world, is ultimately of Chinese origin. Whoever first came up with the expression \u201cnot for all the tea in China\u201d obviously had an inkling of what\u2019s going on. Everything from \u201ctea\u201d in contemporary English to thee<\/em>, Tee<\/em>, th\u00e9<\/em> and t\u00e9<\/em> in Dutch, German, French and Spanish, to char<\/em> in older English slang, ch\u00e1<\/em> in Portuguese, chai<\/em> in Persian and Hindi-Urdu, \u00e7ay<\/em> in Turkish, chay<\/em> in Russian and shay<\/em> in Arabic can be traced back to a single word in Chinese. And yes, even the unusual sounding Polish herbata<\/em> and Lithuanian arbata<\/em>!<\/p>\n These differences in pronunciation can be traced back to the dialects of various regions in China as well as to the historical trade routes that brought tea to the wider world. The Chinese language consists of hundreds of often mutually unintelligible dialects with huge differences in pronunciation. \u201cTea\u201d, written\u8336, is pronounced ch\u00e1<\/em> <\/strong>in Mandarin and Cantonese, but te<\/em> <\/strong>in the dialect of Southern Fujian Province and Taiwan.<\/p>\n The Dutch were among the first Europeans to trade with China and had an outpost on what is now Taiwan. Having picked up the word te<\/em><\/strong> \u2013 from the local Fujian-Taiwanese dialect \u2013 they then proceeded to introduce this exotic new beverage to most of Western Europe.<\/p>\n The Portuguese, however, got their tea from Cantonese-speaking Macau and thus preferred the Cantonese pronunciation, ch\u00e1<\/em><\/strong>. The Poles, Lithuanians and Belarussians on the other hand, preferred to use a Latin phrase for \u201ctea herb\u201d instead \u2013 herba thea <\/em>(the thea <\/em>part coming from Fujian-Taiwanese dialect via Dutch). And this was thus the origin of the words herbata<\/em>, arbata <\/em>and garb\u00e1ta <\/em>in these languages.<\/p>\n Along the Silk Road, Persian traders bought their tea from Northern China, where Mandarin is spoken. Hence their word chai<\/em>, is derived from Mandarin ch\u00e1<\/em><\/strong>. Chai <\/em>then passed on to Central Asia and further west, into Russia and the Balkans. The Persians also introduced chai<\/em> to the Arabs, who pronounce it sh\u0101y<\/em>. In the 16th<\/sup> Century, Turkic- and Persian- speaking Moghuls introduced chai<\/em> to the Indian subcontinent. With trade, chai <\/em>even made it all the way to the east coast of Africa and is now the usual word for \u201ctea\u201d in Swahili.<\/p>\n Most Asian languages like Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai got their words from earlier, archaic forms of Chinese. The Indonesian and Malay teh <\/em>was introduced by traders from Fujian and the Filipino tsa <\/em>or tsaa <\/em>by the Cantonese.<\/p>\n The only languages that do not use a variant of cha<\/em> or te <\/em>is Burmese and a few minority languages in Southwest China and the highlands of Southeast Asia where tea is a native species.<\/p>\n And there you have it \u2013 the story of how the whole world got connected thanks to one soothing beverage with a single name (and its many, many colourful incarnations).<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why every language in the world uses the same two words for \u201ctea\u201d and why in fact, that assumption is wrong! (There\u2019s actually only one word for tea!) Our friend and language guru Brian Loo Soon Hua explains all: The word \u201ctea\u201d, in almost every language in the world, is ultimately of Chinese origin. Whoever … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24,3,97,18,794],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286"}],"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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6286\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/utalk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}