181–190 of 338 posts
Interestingly in my home state of Kerala situated in the south western coast of India. Tea is called Chaaya while tea leaves are called Theyila where ila means leaf. The heavy commercial production of tea was started in Kerala only after the British arrived.
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As a Londoner who moved north, it continually confuses me too. "What are you having for tea?" "Oh, err... just milk thanks"
In French, dejeuner, meaning literally breakfast, used to mean just that. But the nobility was used to getting up so late that dejeuner became lunch, diner became the evening meal, and they invented the 'petit dejeuner' to name the breakfast. In southern France and rural areas, dejeuner remained breakfast, dinner the mid-day meal, and souper the evening one. Miscommunication ensues :)
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Ahh, Polish, also one of those outlier languages that doesn't call tea by the two words in the article :)
The article has it wrong, as I mentioned in another comment. Polish word for tea is "herbata" which comes from "herbal tea".
I'm no Chinese expert, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I've found that the Chinese word 茶 (cha) doesn't always necessarily mean tea, but can refer generically to a number of different brewed drinks. e.g. barley tea (大麥茶), ginger tea (薑茶), golden oats tea (燕麥茶), etc. all of which translate to tea, but often contain no tea leaves. It may seem like a nitpick, but when you're in China and order what you expect t…
There are similar words in English. My favorite example is Pudding, which can mean anything from black pudding (a sausage), to yorkshire pudding (a bread) to plum pudding (a dessert) source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-brits-talk-about-...
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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…
I don't think it's as easy as geography, it depends on your parents upbringing too. One other great British-English question is "what do you call an individually portioned baked bread article" ... roll, barm, bap, cob, ...
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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.
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if you want to argue correctness, it should be "spicy" since Australia speaks english :)
Translate garam masala next. :)
Too many places, especially in Europe, fail at making spicy food, they just make burning hot (or bland) food.
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I'd never heard of this before. Growing up in rural Scotland, meals were always "Breakfast", "Dinner" and "Tea". There was sometimes confusion with other people over whether dinner was a midday or evening meal, but I'd never thought much of it until now.
We (USA) say breakfast, lunch, and dinner, though my grandparents would say supper instead of dinner sometimes. I wonder where/when the split occurred.
The local Nepali speaking people of Darjeeling, which is famous its champagne of teas, call it chi-yah. Close to Cha but not quite.
I was about to add this. It's "chi-yaa" almost all over the mountains of Nepal.
Although I live in that area and don't drink tea.