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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

#251

Post by gumby »

voidlogic wrote: post #232
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.

There is tons of disagreement about this stuff, as it varies so much region to region, but in general, in most English peaking places: The three meals are "Breakfast", "Lunch" and "Supper". And if Lunch or Supper is the biggest/most formal meal of the day it may be called "Dinner" instead. Hence family "Christmas Dinner" may be at lunch time, but your "Dinner party" is in the evening.

I have only encountered “supper” as the name of a primary meal in parts of the USA. I think “breakfast, lunch, dinner” likely is the most widespread formulation. I never heard “supper” in Australia or Canada at all.

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

#252

Post by romwell »

klipt wrote: post #224
Sean1708 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading your comment I'm a bit confused about what your point is. Even in English tea doesn't necessarily mean a drink brewed in tea leaves, which you presumably know since you yourself say: > e.g. barley tea (大麥茶), ginger tea (薑茶), golden oats tea (燕麥茶), etc. all of which translate to tea You call all of these things tea (and I would call them all tea too), so I'm not really sure why you say that cha doesn't necessa…

I have heard some people argue that "tea" refers only to things made using the plant Camellia sinensis (e.g. black tea, green tea, white tea) and everything else (e.g. rooibos) is a "tisane".

Never heard "tisane" being used by anyone.

Most of the people in the US don't seem to care much about the distinction between infusions containing tea leaves and infusions that don't (when it's not just tea leaves); those who do, would often ask whether it's a caffeinated "tea" or not (infusions containing tea leaves usually contain caffeine).

Personally, I prefer to use the term "herbal infusion", because it unambiguous and relatively widespread.

However, in common usage people will say "herbal tea", both in English and Russian, even when aware that the tea plant is not in the mix. It seems like the crusade for "tea/chai" meaning something brewed from tea leaves is not only doomed, but has been lost before the West started to drink tea.

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

#253

Post by HumanDrivenDev »

jdmichal wrote: post #239
HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #233

In modern Taiwanese Min Nan, "tê" sounds more like "day" than "tea". Maybe it sounded different in the Min Nan of Fujian a few hundred years ago, or something was "lost in transcription" when the dutch wrote "thee".

I don't have any reason not to believe you, but your position does not seem to be backed up by Wikipedia, where /d/ is not listed as a phoneme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Taiwanese_Hokkien I have a hypothesis, mostly dependent on the position of a native English speaker, which I have no idea whether you are or not: It's common to not be able to easily distinguish /e/ and /ai/. English does not have the fo…

Yeap you probably hit the nail on the head. I'm a native English speaker and I only know a tiny bit of Hokkien. I really struggle with the aspirated/non-aspirated aspect of many of the consonants.

Not sure about the vowel sounds, I found those all reasonably trivial to distinguish.

https://mkdict.net/results?query=te%CC%82&page=1&q_type=tw&r...

If you click on the "+" button, there's a voice recording of how to pronounce it. It's from the Taiwanese Ministry of Education. To me it sounds much more like "day" than "tea".

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

#254

Post by nimrod0 »

"A few languages have their own way of talking about tea. These languages are generally in places where tea grows naturally, which led locals to develop their own way to refer to it. In Burmese, for example, tea leaves are lakphak."

Actually, 'lakphak' is not entirely distinct, and likely related to 'tea,' at least the 'lak' part. The STEDT project has a number of reconstructions across Sino-Tibetan for etyma variously meaning leaf, flat object, and tea: http://stedt.berkeley.edu/~stedt-cgi/rootcanal.pl/etymon/786

See also my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134698

The first character associated with a 'bitter herb' that later became specific to tea, 荼 (rlya), is probably a cousin of this 'lak' in modern Burmese.

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

#255

Post by gumby »

horshod wrote: post #165
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…

This is so interesting! So your mom grew up in a Marathi family in Guangdong?

No, in Ipoh, Malaysia, where there were (unsurprisingly) few Maharashtrians, though plenty of Tamils and Sikhs due to te British Empire. Mostly Chinese people though so she needed to communicate in Marathi, Hokkien (Fujianese), Cantonese, and Malay. Then the country was (re-)invaded; the Japanese had schools (pretty much only for Indians) and taught them Japanese; after that the English came back and she learnt English.

In fact, though I also use three languages, the only one she and I have in common is English. Though I learnt some Marathi as a kid it was just how to read and how to talk about family relations (so limited in the European languages!) and food. We were in a part of Australia that hadn't yet heard that the White Australia laws had been abolished so speaking anything but English, even in your own home, was Very Bad, and emphasized your wog status.

I run into Mumbaikars and Punekars all the time here in the bay area but most are Hindi speakers.

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

#256

Post by gumby »

haskal wrote: post #170
horshod wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so interesting! So your mom grew up in a Marathi family in Guangdong?

That is such a weird combination. Most Maharashtrians I know from the previous generation (including my parents) are from Maharashtra, and Maharashtrians have somewhat of a reputation for not wanting to leave Maharashtra.

The Pune I remember from my childhood was a nice, if quiet place with lots of trees, and the wonderful Deccan climate so I can understand not wanting to move.

Now it's become just another huge city IMHO.

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

#258

Post by kasey_junk »

jawilson2 wrote: post #123
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.

We (USA) say breakfast, lunch, and dinner, though my grandparents would say supper instead of dinner sometimes. I wonder where/when the split occurred.

I think you’ll find supper in common usage in the US but always as the same meal as dinner which is the evening meal.

Dinner is definitely most common near me but I wouldn’t blink if someone asked me over for supper or said it’s supper time.

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

#259

Post by enqk »

wazoox wrote: post #177
baby wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say “dejeuner” to mean breakfast a lot. But everyone knows that it is also not correct (we always this kind of people that will correct people on that)

But it is correct. The Parisian-imposed usage is obviously faulty :)

Well thing is, in Paris, you often skip the breakfast, so the real moment where you're breaking the fast is during lunch.

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

#260

Post by jdmichal »

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #253
jdmichal wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have any reason not to believe you, but your position does not seem to be backed up by Wikipedia, where /d/ is not listed as a phoneme. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA/Taiwanese_Hokkien I have a hypothesis, mostly dependent on the position of a native English speaker, which I have no idea whether you are or not: It's common to not be able to easily distinguish /e/ and /ai/. English does not have the fo…

Yeap you probably hit the nail on the head. I'm a native English speaker and I only know a tiny bit of Hokkien. I really struggle with the aspirated/non-aspirated aspect of many of the consonants. Not sure about the vowel sounds, I found those all reasonably trivial to distinguish. https://mkdict.net/results?query=te%CC%82&page=1&q_type=tw&r... If you click on the "+" button, there's a voice recording of how to prono…

The vowel sound definitely matches /e/. It sounds like /ai/, but there's none of the glide that would be present in a diphthong.

I ran it by my wife, as she's a native Spanish and English speaker, and she agrees with /e/ over /ai/.

Thanks for that link. Very cool site; reminds me of dict.leo.org for German.

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