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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

#191

Post by Bartweiss »

gumby wrote: post #70
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…

> 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.

Yep, that looks like a serious mistake. My impression is that 'tea' or 'high tea' describes an all-class, or primarily lower class, nighttime meal. "Afternoon tea" describes the ~4 PM snack with sweet pastries instead of a primary meal.

A bit of investigation says that our mutual impression is correct, but complicated by Scotland, where "high tea" may be served with the size and timing of "afternoon tea" but with heavier, savory dishes on offer.

https://www.thespruce.com/afternon-vs-high-tea-difference-43...

https://afternoontea.co.uk/information/what-is-high-tea/

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

#192

Post by myth_buster »

If this fascinates you as it does for me, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies [0] is an equally fascinating read, although there are arguments against the hypothesis.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Germs-Steel-Fates-Societies/dp/0...

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

#193

Post by Bartweiss »

ronyclau wrote: post #81
gumby wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

My grandparents (Scottish) use "afternoon tea" for the light meal you describe, and the evening meal is interchangeably "tea" or "supper". Confusingly, the lunch meal is "dinner".

I knew there was a heavy class difference here, but apparently there's also substantial regional difference even within the British Isles.

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

#194

Post by grzm »

llamaz wrote: post #190
kingofpandora wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the confusion?

why the article contradicts me and says the tea is "chay" in Hindi and Urdu. I'm not saying the articles wrong, but maybe there's something I'm missing

Tranliteration, particularly into English, is fraught with myriad difficulties, the least of which being English orthography itself: there isn't a consistent mapping of sounds to letters. And there are often different systems of transliteration: from Japanese, 茶 (tea) can be transliterated as cha (Hepburn) or tya (Kunrei).

I don't read the article and the spellings as prescriptive with respect to pronunciation. I'm not familiar with transliteration of Hindi or Urdu (if someone more knowledgable on the subject would chime in, I'd love to learn a bit more), but I wouldn't read too much into the spellings.

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

#196

Post by mazerackham »

njsubedi wrote: post #148
ShirsenduK wrote: post #44

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.

sounds like cha-ye, or tea leaves in Mandarin

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

#197

Post by chaostheory »

dwyer wrote: post #93

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…

So one thing that a lot of people, including the author of the article, may not realize is that Chinese 'dialects' aren't really dialects. They are each different languages spoken by different ethnic groups, kind of like how Spanish and Italian are different languages but still related. These different languages are called dialects mainly for political reasons, with the main one being unification. It's useful to think of China as Europe, unified through force instead of legislation.

Anyways, I'm going to disagree with you. imo 茶 has the same meaning in different parts of China. It's just said differently in differents parts of China just as like it's called different things in different parts of Europe. The only difference is that in China it's written as the same character.

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

#198

Post by cevn »

drwu wrote: post #164
codeN wrote: post #162

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.

I thought `Chaaya` could mean 茶叶(chá'yè), while 茶 is the tea and 叶 are the leaves. The interesting thing here is that the old pronunciation of 茶(cha) was with a long vocal (chaa), whereas 叶(ye) was short and sounded like (ya)

In hindi, chai is written चाय - chaaya, but the final "a" is elided due to language rules. I wonder if it has anything to do with that.

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

#199

Post by 7952 »

philbarr wrote: post #173
rkachowski wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the North of England and Scotland it's usually Breakfast, Dinner, and Tea. If you go down South it's Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner. And sometimes if you're really lucky you'll meet a Southerner who'll freak out about it, "Ha! You said 'dinner' but you meant 'lunch'!! Ha! Ha! When do you eat your lunch?! Ha Ha!!" I had an old boss that did this regularly. The dick.

We usually have one main meal, and another that is lighter and more like a snack.

If you have the main meal in the middle of the day then it is called "dinner". The snack you have at the end of the afternoon is "tea".

If you have the main meal at the end of the afternoon it is "dinner". The snack you eat in the middle of the day is "lunch".

The difference probably depends on if you go home for a meal at mid-day or not. The later is probably more traditional as people used to work or study much closer to home. And there was somebody around during the day to prepare a meal. But nowadays going home for a main meal in the middle of the day is unusual so we all just have a small snack.

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