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Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

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Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#51

Post by jutaz »

summner wrote: post #43
yetihehe wrote: post #6

Polish language has "herbata", which is a third one, from herbs.

But where do we boil water for "herba-ta"? In "Czajnik" (keetle), where root "czaj" most definately comes from "cha".

Lithuanians call tea as "arbata", and it's boiled in "arbatinis". It also has nothing to do with "herbs". AFAIK, there is no reference to the word tea or cha anywhere in terms of tea.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#52

Post by Keyframe »

smcl wrote: post #36
bitcoinusername wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 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.

I'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?

It 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.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#53

Post by Keyframe »

idlewords wrote: post #37
yetihehe wrote: post #6

Polish language has "herbata", which is a third one, from herbs.

Poland represent! We also have a word for "woman" that is unlike any other Slavic language. Polish goes its own way.

Other slavic languages (croatian here) also have that word, similar. It means something different though. It meant (that) something different in polish too. "A bit" offensive, haha.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#55

Post by rimliu »

ant6n wrote: post #38
richardknop wrote: post #26

In 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.

I'd say all Slavic languages use that word.

Except Polish, like stated above.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#56

Post by spfix63 »

jutaz wrote: post #51
summner wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where do we boil water for "herba-ta"? In "Czajnik" (keetle), where root "czaj" most definately comes from "cha".

Lithuanians call tea as "arbata", and it's boiled in "arbatinis". It also has nothing to do with "herbs". AFAIK, there is no reference to the word tea or cha anywhere in terms of tea.

Clearly, arbata comes from the same herbal tea origin, just the h got dropped somewhere along the way, herb -> arba, tea -> ta

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#57

Post by vidarh »

ljf wrote: post #39
sean-duffy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be clear, "tea" in almost all cases doesn't imply the meal will be served with tea. It's just a name for the evening meal in the north of England.

As a kid in Sheffield I understood it as 'dinner' was your hot meal whenever you might have it, and tea was a lighter meal. So many kids had a hot meal at school (school dinner) and then went home for tea.

As a Norwegian in London, I still find it weird that my sons school serves "school dinner" around lunch-time. Even though the Norwegian word for dinner is "middag" which literally means "middle of the day" (though nobody uses it in that meaning any more, since it would be very confusing given that "middags-tider" "dinner-time" is pretty consistently late afternoon/early evening)

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#60

Post by DoreenMichele »

gerhardi wrote: post #59

Almost the same goes for the word Restaurant. Everywhere in the world it's almost the same - except in Russia it is pectopah! :)

For 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.
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