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Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
21–30 of 338 posts
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#22Polish language has "herbata", which is a third one, from herbs.
A steeped beverage from non-tea herbs isn't tea.
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#23Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#24Kind of strange that this refers to "Sinitic" contrasting to "Min Nan" when Min Nan is a Sinitic language.
Just learnt that "Min Nan" dialect can be referred to "Hokkien"
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#25Polish language has "herbata", which is a third one, from herbs.
A steeped beverage from non-tea herbs isn't tea.
This 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...
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#26In 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.
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#27It 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_...
As a Londoner who moved north, it continually confuses me too.
"What are you having for tea?"
"Oh, err... just milk thanks"
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#28It 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_...
Ahem, my English book certainly featured a story about a worker kid coming home from school and having some kind of grub "for tea" at 5 pm, i.e. food with tea as the drink.
My understanding was that this usage referred to a meal eaten in the evening, i.e. not lunch. Your link seems to confirm that.
My grandmother used to serve tea for the evening meal when there were no guests other than her little grandson. But that's the only Danish example I personally know of. Don't know why, tea is not a bad drink for a meal.
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#29Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Some 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-us...
Likely that influence comes from when India was part of the British Empire. Lots of Indian-derived words made it into British English.
Pyjamas 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 it is likely that "char" is derived from Chinese (another country with rather a lot of languages - would the real Chinese please stand up!)