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Why the World Only Has Two Words For Tea (qz.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: With a few minor exceptions, there are really only two ways to say "tea" in the world. One is like the English term -- te in Spanish and tee in Afrikaans are two examples. The other is some variation of cha, like chay in Hindi. Both versions come from China. How they spread around the world offers a clear picture of how globalization worked before "globalization" was a term anybody used. The words that sound like "cha" spread across land, along the Silk Road. The "tea"-like phrasings spread over water, by Dutch traders bringing the novel leaves back to Europe.
The term cha is "Sinitic," meaning it is common to many varieties of Chinese. It began in China and made its way through central Asia, eventually becoming "chay" in Persian. That is no doubt due to the trade routes of the Silk Road, along which, according to a recent discovery, tea was traded over 2,000 years ago. This form spread beyond Persia, becoming chay in Urdu, shay in Arabic, and chay in Russian, among others. It even it made its way to sub-Saharan Africa, where it became chai in Swahili. The Japanese and Korean terms for tea are also based on the Chinese cha, though those languages likely adopted the word even before its westward spread into Persian. But that doesn't account for "tea." The te form used in coastal-Chinese languages spread to Europe via the Dutch, who became the primary traders of tea between Europe and Asia in the 17th century, as explained in the World Atlas of Language Structures. The main Dutch ports in east Asia were in Fujian and Taiwan, both places where people used the te pronunciation. The Dutch East India Company's expansive tea importation into Europe gave us the French the, the German Tee, and the English tea.
The term cha is "Sinitic," meaning it is common to many varieties of Chinese. It began in China and made its way through central Asia, eventually becoming "chay" in Persian. That is no doubt due to the trade routes of the Silk Road, along which, according to a recent discovery, tea was traded over 2,000 years ago. This form spread beyond Persia, becoming chay in Urdu, shay in Arabic, and chay in Russian, among others. It even it made its way to sub-Saharan Africa, where it became chai in Swahili. The Japanese and Korean terms for tea are also based on the Chinese cha, though those languages likely adopted the word even before its westward spread into Persian. But that doesn't account for "tea." The te form used in coastal-Chinese languages spread to Europe via the Dutch, who became the primary traders of tea between Europe and Asia in the 17th century, as explained in the World Atlas of Language Structures. The main Dutch ports in east Asia were in Fujian and Taiwan, both places where people used the te pronunciation. The Dutch East India Company's expansive tea importation into Europe gave us the French the, the German Tee, and the English tea.
Latte?
Capo?
Espresso?
Treason
Polish language is an interesting exception -- "herbata" = "tea".
herbata? itiye? Arbata?
Seriously! This is not news and it certainly doesn't matter.
But I do love how the mods are so quick to burn their points modding down almost every thread here.
Stay classy slashfucks.
thé
in a civilized board it would be seen.
a strange creature that molests goats: one is "Chupacabra", and the other is "creimer".
Adults laugh at the first word because they know it's just a myth, but the word "Creimer" makes all the women run away and hide their underage daughters and the men run to protect the food.
That wouldn't be an example of 'globalization', but rather transculturalism. Globalization is something very, very different. On a similar note, what is often referred to as 'cultural appropriation' by Berkeley snowflakes is also transculturalism (as I doubt very much most African Americans with dreads, let alone white folks, are themselves practicing Rastafarians, for example) . If we bothered to teach people anything in college anymore, we would know these things. The Silk Road was indeed a factor in this phenomena at that time.
Wiktionary's etymology says both forms are derived from the same root in a proto-language. I.e., they're cognates.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Entomology is the study of insects. Perhaps you should have spent 6 seconds online looking up the definition of words...
PS: You wanted "etymology".
Mostly random stuff.
In Portuguese the word is "chá" and originated in Macau. That does not match the article theory: it came through sea trade, at least in that case.
You cannot proceed from the informal to formal by formal means
I thought this was fascinating! My favorite article for this year thus far.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
DId you read the article? It discusses this interesting anomaly.
Yet the Dutch were not the first to Asia. That honor belongs to the Portuguese, who are responsible for the island of Taiwan’s colonial European name, Formosa. And the Portuguese traded not through Fujian but Macao, where chá is used. That’s why, on the map above, Portugal is a pink dot in a sea of blue.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
Cha sounds stupid. Tea is way better.
'OK' is known around the world and means the same. It's often associated with affirmative sign language. I haven't the energy to spend on research but I assume someone here has. So speak up- tell us what it stands for, tell us why, tell us origins, tell us how it spread. Use a scholarly analysis to get your mod points up to 3 so I'll see your post.
Other than that 'Coca Cola' is one of the best known words worldwide. I've seen it on a billboard deep in a Philippine jungle where it was used as the wall of a house high up on stilts.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Back in German class in the early '70s, my instructor made this claim for "telephone":
In every other language in the world, it was called "telephone" - inheriting the sound from the American English word for the American invention and and (if necessary) distorting the pronunciation slightly to use the closest phonemes.
But German, with its standard of buildAWordByRunningTogetherADescriptivePhrase, called it a "fernsprecher" (far-speaker).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
To me it seems that even "te" and "cha" are so similar when pronounced that both would have the same word originally.
My suspicion is that it's actually a relatively new word that haven't had the time to divert much and in the modern world with all communication going on the smaller variants disappear. The word is also pretty short and is therefore more resilient compared to "coffee".
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
...Said the notable ambassador G'Kar.
To me it seems that even "te" and "cha" are so similar when pronounced that both would have the same word originally.
The clue is in TFS. Cha is the Standard (Mandarin) Chinese word. The same Chinese character is pronounced te in the Hokkien dialect spoken in Fujian and Taiwan where the Dutch traders were taking tea to Europe from. What is interesting is that the Japanese is also cha. Most other Chinese words seem to have come to Japanese from the Hokkien pronunciation (ie up through Taiwan and the Ryukyu Islands).
Down south they also call it supper...
(You probably have to be English to get that)
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/r/TodayILearned ?
actually the shitholes say Te.
I actually found that interesting. Surprises me too.
Zulu: itiye
Lithuanian: arbata
Samoan: lauti
Malagasy: dite
Polish: herbata
Maltese: corto
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
much more than about how somebody made a zillion dollars by animating the color pink only to be sued by someone who'd animated the color blue. Interestingly, linguistics and development of such has been a side interest of many people (mostly nerds) I've known.
Go back to reading your comic book.
I thought this was obvious....it's because of the song... Tea for Two and Two for Tea...la la la...
Wow, looks like someone hasn't had their coffee this morning.
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
Wandering aimlessly through the Savannah of Tanzania, we came across a village and were offered what essentially herbal tea. The elder called it medicine (at least this is how it was translated). It's still chai in Swahili, but wonder if tea is ever translated as medicine?
Actually it's pronounced as "deh" in Taiwanese (similar to the word "dead" without the second "d" sound).
You should care, because both of them are rascist.
Of course, you know there's an xkcd for that.
Uh, then prove that you don't care by not clicking on the headline.
To me it seems that even "te" and "cha" are so similar when pronounced that both would have the same word originally.
Yes, it is the same word (phonetically, "cha" is "tsa") - we Greeks call it "tsai" and/or "teion".
I disagree. I think a 'brew' or 'cuppa' are better.
Why UNIX?
See https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki...
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Actually there is a lot of Arabic influence in Portuguese due to proximity to North Africa and the Moors who colonised large parts of the Iberian Peninsula. This happened long before the Portuguese established their own trading colonies in Macau and the Far East so it is actually completely in agreement with the article that they should use the ch- variant.
Tea in Polish is "Herbata" from Latin Herba Thea
We all call it coffee
Every sentient race has its own version of Swedish meatballs... it is one of those great universal mysteries that will never be explained, or would drive you mad if you knew the answer. --Ambassador G'Kar
That makes some sense, our portuguese elites might be going to North Africs to get tea,instead of having it cross Spain. That is, until we charted a sea route to get there.
Actually there is a lot of Arabic influence in Portuguese due to proximity to North Africa and the Moors who colonised large parts of the Iberian Peninsula. This happened long before the Portuguese established their own trading colonies in Macau and the Far East so it is actually completely in agreement with the article that they should use the ch- variant.
Spain had a large border with the moors for 300 years more than Portugal, yet they call it Té.
What was unique to Portugal? the place from were most of his tea came from (they got it independently of dutch).
So your theory doesnt hold up.
The word is chã. That's an ah sound pronounced nasally, like Bob Dylan would.
No, your children are not the special ones. Nor are your pets.
Actually there is a lot of Arabic influence in Portuguese due to proximity to North Africa and the Moors who colonised large parts of the Iberian Peninsula. This happened long before the Portuguese established their own trading colonies in Macau and the Far East so it is actually completely in agreement with the article that they should use the ch- variant.
there's a glaring oversight it that argument, the Portuguese started bringing Tea to Europe almost 100 year before the Dutch (and never stopped), and there was praticaly no Tea in Portugal before the Age of Discoveries. So they had all the reasons to come up with a name independently of the Dutch.
basic entomology one can look up online in 5 seconds
I'd like to file a bug report on your post.
In Portuguese the word is "chá" and originated in Macau.
The Portuguese trading empire was a tiny fraction of what the Dutch accomplished. The Dutch fleet was estimated to be larger than all other traders in Europe combined and it was the Dutch that introduced tea to most of Europe.
That does not match the article theory: it came through sea trade, at least in that case.
The article specifically talks about it.
What's the point of the dots, if there is not even mouseover? Do I have to guess that exceptions in the European midst are POrtuguese and Basque?
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Click on them (for example, https://bh.wikipedia.org/wiki/...), copy paste the title to Google Translate, it will give you transliteration of the sound and it also has an audio button to hear it.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
It's much better. Quartz should die.
http://wals.info/feature/138A#...
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
See:
https://eu.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The source for WALS map's designation is Malherbe, Michael and Rosenberg, S. 1996. _Les langages de l'humanité: une encyclopédie des 3000 langues parlées dans le monde_, page 605
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
"I thought this was fascinating! My favorite article for this year thus far."
Indeed, at least it's 'news for linguists' even if they can't get those for us nerds.
What about the linguists who are also nerds?
My mother tongue Malayalam has both: 'chaya' and 'theyila'
Interestingly, Greece, being near the border between "chai" and "te" regions from the eastern and western influxes uses an amalgamation of the two words that sounds close to "tsai".
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
The word is chã. That's an ah sound pronounced nasally, like Bob Dylan would.
No, it's not. The word is "chá" as originally mentioned. Portuguese has nasal vowels, but this word doesn't use one of them.
...and that explains why "a cup of char" is a way of referencing a cup of tea. I always thought it was odd slang, now I know it's actually distorted Chinese.
http://www.rmg.co.uk/discover/... has more (Royal Museums Greenwich).
"It is a curious fact, and one to which no-one knows quite how much importance to attach, that something like 85 percent of all known worlds in the Galaxy, be they primitive or highly advanced, have invented a drink called jynnan tonyx, or gee-N'N-T'N-ix, or jinond-o-nicks, or any one of a thousand variations on this phonetic theme. The drinks themselves are not the same, and vary between the Sivolvian ‘chinanto/mnigs’ which is ordinary water served just above room temperature, and the Gagrakackan 'tzjin-anthony-ks’ which kills cows at a hundred paces; and in fact the only one common factor between all of them, beyond the fact that their names sound the same, is that they were all invented and named before the worlds concerned made contact with any other worlds." - Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
portugal was bringing tea into europe (by sea) for centuries before the dutch, and the portuguese word for tea is cha. so there goes the "land vs. sea" theory.
Interesting thought. I'm not familiar with Swahili, but in Southern Africa medicine is often referred to as "muti". Might be a coincidence rather than an etymological link.
Screaming "Cultural Theft" in 3...2...1
And of course "atabreh" in reverse Polish.
No - reverse Polish would be : "Tea, Earl Grey, Hot."
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
All linguists are nerds.
p.s. you're a cunt.
"After a fairly shaky start to the day, Arthur's mind was beginning to reassemble itself from the shell-shocked fragments the previous day had left him with.
He had found a Nutri-Matic machine which had provided him with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
The way it functioned was very interesting. When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.
#DeleteFacebook
If the name "tea" came from oceanic trading with China and the name "cha" came from overland trading on the Silk Road, than why do the Portuguese refer to this beverage as "sha"? They were the major oceanic power at this time and certainly did most of their East Asian trading on the sea.
That's not true because in American it is called soccer.
that in most countries in the world the same or similar word is used for wine.
Western North Africans (Tunisia, Algeria and Marocco) says 'Tey' not chai. My guess is that their first contact with tea came through piracy of ditch/west European ships in the Mediterranean Sea... Countries using the 'tea'-variants of the word.
All linguists are cunning!
Oh really?! Only two words for tea? Care to explain the Belarusian "harbatu" (and Lithuanian "arbata"?
Don't get me wrong, almost all words for tea (but not all, there are a very few exceptions like stated above) in almost all languages break down to one of the two cha/chai or te/tea variations... but it's not the only two words for tea.
Trade is a fundamental shaper of society but it is rarely taught in History Classes. Trade words like tea, wine, cinnamon can be used to study its range.
There are 39 words for tea. But most of us only know 2 of them. Any now who the fuck cares.
Perhaps he only knew those two foreign words, Entomology and Etymology, and is constantly mixing them up?
That could happen to the best of us!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Fags? What do Harley riders and the bike curious have to do with it?
This space unintentionally left blank.
Who knows what the fuck you drank. Lucky your liver didn't pack it in.
See subject & it is 1 of a few words where it is UNLIKE Russian (many nouns same but diff. verbiage) as near relative slav languages (yes, there are others but I easily pick up on/get it when Russians speak to one another, @ least the general gist & subject due to the similarities).
NOW, on THAT note? Russian "CHAI" has a NEAR analog in Polish of "ChaiNiek" sort of (sp? may be off, I write polish too (easy to learn compared to U.S. English) but on a 1st grade level @ best but I can read it well)!
ChaiNiek in Polish = TEAPOT!
APK
P.S.=> Teapot in polish (though TEA = herbata) is done on the RUSSIAN word oddly - go figure & I thought you'd find THAT interesting... apk
Maybe distorted by some local pronunciation (Algarve, Açores) may sound like that, but it is not. Not all our words are pronounce nasally Herr Godwin.
Fuck you and the censorship of the "racism" brigade.
Then why do we write "Tao" instead of "Dao"?
Along the same lines, the word for 'cat' (the domestic animal) in nearly all indigenous languages of Central or South America where Spanish is the predominant language is something like 'mis' or 'mish'. The reason is that cats were introduced by the Spaniards, and the Spanish word for calling a cat to come is 'mis'.
One language where this is not the word is Waorani, a language isolate of Ecuador. Their word for 'cat' sounds like the English word 'kitty', since cats were introduced to this tribe by English-speaking missionaries in the 1960s.
I saw a programme years ago about some place in Africa where the entire tribe or village spat into a big pot and then everyone drank from it. Apparently it's a normal thing for them. Absolutely disgusting.
Chai :p
Chaha
Cutting
OK, here's a question. There is a specific flavor of tea (which I take to be from the subcontinent, though I might be wrong about that) called Chai. It's a very spicy tea made with cardamom, cloves, star anise and cinnamon. In addition to the tea ingredient!
Now Chay and Chai are awfully similar words and that seems more than a coincidence, especially since they come from the same part of the world. It would seem that a generic 'tea' word has also been applied to a specific flavor of tea.
Is this so and how did that happen?
And don't even get me started on feng shui.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Let's leave my ex-wife out of this.
(You don't want to know. Really.)
Chinese 'D' sounds are spelled with a T in Wade-Giles romanization.
Dao --> Tao
De --> Te
Mystery solved
Too bad slashdot doesn't have Unicode support. You can't see this awesome Han Zi. èOE
Other than fish (carp) jello, this is the only thing that I was afraid to try. Natto.yumyum