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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

#61

Post by whatusername »

sean-duffy wrote: post #34
olau wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 someone who grew up on a farm in country Australia "tea" was the evening meal every night. A "cuppa" was the drink of tea - whenever someone was visiting the house.

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

#63

Post by paganel »

k3liutZu wrote: post #49
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".

And the close neighbors of Romania we say "ceainic" to kettle which does come from the root word "ceai".

In Southern Romania we tend to use "ibric" more, which comes directly from Turkish.

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

#64

Post by phillc73 »

whatusername wrote: post #61
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 someone who grew up on a farm in country Australia "tea" was the evening meal every night. A "cuppa" was the drink of tea - whenever someone was visiting the house.

It was the same for me, growing up in rural Australia in the mid-70s and 80s. However, my parents were working class raised in Sydney.

I am not sure this is universal for Australia and may also not be the case now.

I'm fairly certain my neices and nephews (mostly teenagers now), no longer call the evening meal tea.

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

#65

Post by chewz »

paganel wrote: post #63
k3liutZu wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the close neighbors of Romania we say "ceainic" to kettle which does come from the root word "ceai".

In Southern Romania we tend to use "ibric" more, which comes directly from Turkish.

In Poland we also have a word 'imbryk' for a teapot but it is rarely used nowadays.

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

#66

Post by skety »

jwarren wrote: post #27
kawsper wrote: post #17

It 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"

Yeah, and dinner being used for lunch while tea is used for dinner. Not confusing at all.

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

#68

Post by arethuza »

sean-duffy wrote: post #34
olau wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

When I was growing up in North East Scotland "dinner" was the lunch time meal and "tea" was served at about 5:30pm.

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

#69

Post by pwagland »

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.

From an Australian heritage, I would say that dinner and tea were, more or less, used interchangeably. Some families used one, some the other, but pretty much everyone understood both. Over time I get the feeling that dinner was the winner in that choice war, but that might just be an east coast/west coast thing.

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

#70

Post by gumby »

kawsper wrote: post #17

It 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_...

That Wikipedia section needs a rewrite. It does mention that that usage is a class marker but then conflates it with the pastry-and-tea afternoon snack practice of upper classes. They are two radically disjoint uses.

The origin of the “tea” being the term for evening meal are pretty well attested to lie the poverty of the English lower classes who could not afford much more than a cup of tea in the evening.

I grew up using the word “tea” to refer to the evening meal in Australia (actually my parents were at pains to avoid this usage, but the rest of my dad’s family still does). My father, the only one in his family to attend university, clearly saw it as a dangerous class marker.

Interestingly my mother grew up using a chai language (Marathi) in the home but te languages (Cantonese and Fujianese) in the street. These usages of course were all for the drink.

(And btw your comment was funny to me because on of the all time greatest linguists of English was a Dane, Otto Jesperson).

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