Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've only heard "red tea" used to refer to rooibos tea.
Specifically in Poland: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu-erh Translating the article: Pu-erh (chin. 普洱茶, pǔ’ěr chá) – a kind of tea that is classified as red tea in Poland (black tea in China since the Chinese classify the tea according to the colour of the brew, as opposed to Europeans who classify tea according to the colour of dried leaves).
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
#152It 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
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
Specifically in Poland: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu-erh Translating the article: Pu-erh (chin. 普洱茶, pǔ’ěr chá) – a kind of tea that is classified as red tea in Poland (black tea in China since the Chinese classify the tea according to the colour of the brew, as opposed to Europeans who classify tea according to the colour of dried leaves).
Ahh, Polish, also one of those outlier languages that doesn't call tea by the two words in the article :)
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#155Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#156What about "herbata" in Polish then?
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#157Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#158Portugal imported tea from India way before Macau. That was the whole thing of the sea route to India...
Spices were far bigger initially. Black pepper, cloves, nutmegs and mace were the real money makers. Cloves and nutmegs especially, since they only grew natively on a handful of the Molucca islands, and a succession of bloody and exploitative regimes maintained a monopoly on production and export almost into the 19th century.
Visiting Mindanao island, in the Philippines in 1686, the Englishman William Dampier observed the following:
"...but the nutmegs this island produces are fair and large, yet they have no great store of them, being unwilling to propagate them or the cloves, for fear that should invite the Dutch to visit them and bring them into subjection as they have done the rest of the neighbouring islands where they grow. For the Dutch, being seated among the Spice Islands, have monopolised all the trade into their own hands and will not suffer any of the natives to dispose of it but to themselves alone. Nay, they are so careful to preserve it in their own hands that they will not suffer the spice to grow in the uninhabited islands, but send soldiers to cut the trees down. Captain Rofy told me that while he lived with the Dutch he was sent with other men to cut down the spice-trees; and that he himself did at several times cut down 7 or 800 trees. Yet although the Dutch take such care to destroy them there are many uninhabited islands that have great plenty of spice-trees, as I have been informed by Dutchmen that have been there, particularly by a captain of a Dutch ship that I met with at Achin who told me that near the island Banda there is an island where the cloves, falling from the trees, do lie and rot on the ground, and they are at the time when the fruit falls 3 or 4 inches thick under the trees. He and some others told me that it would not be a hard matter for an English vessel to purchase a ship's cargo of spice of the natives of some of these Spice Islands."[1]
Whether the trees were truly native to this island, or brought there from elsewhere, is probably not known.
[1] A New Voyage Around the World, William Dampier, 1697, http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500461h.html
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, that was very informative. I was always told that dinner (from "dine") is the main meal of the day. So if you have a 'fancy' afternoon meal that can be your dinner (e.g. we usually do Christmas dinner between 3 and 4). I wonder if HN knows of a linguistic map for meal names, it appears that these words shift meaning a lot. EDIT: I thought this was interesting -- "Harvard's Dialect Survey had the question, 'Wh…
The slightly snooty Daily Telegraph style guide: "Christmas lunch is what most of our readers would eat, not Christmas dinner. Use the latter only if referring specifically to an evening meal." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/143530...
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Christmas+lunc...
Also this:
https://trends.google.co.uk/trends/explore?q=Christmas%20lun...
Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting! Never heard anyone use "tea" to describe the evening meal. Tea refers to the light meal at late afternoon, after lunch and before the evening meal (dinner) at my place, seems to be same as the "common" usage. BTW, Cantonese is actually a "chai language": the character 茶 (tea) reads like "char" as in charcoal, without the h sound and in a low tone.
What do you mean by “without the h sound” ? “Charcoal” doesn’t have an h sound as far as I can tell.