Tea in other languages

52 Replies

In ayurveda,Tea was called ‘KAHRA

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TeaRunner said

I actually did get around to investigating why Polish name for tea (“HERBATA”) does not resemble the word in any other language. It turns out that in Poland tea was originally used only as medication, sold only in pharmacies and considered to be some kind of Chinese herb – hence the Latin root “herb” in its name.

RiverTea said

Thanks for sharing this. It’s actually pretty logical if you get to investigating etymology.

Infussion said

From Latin herba thea. Its use was widespread and not only as medication, however it was the initial “marketing” approach :)

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TeaRunner said

I really got rolling here, but I just realized that a Polish word for a tea kettle is “CZAJ-nik”. Go figure!
Please somebody – give me something else to think about, quick!

RiverTea said

How about a joke… a tea joke? :))

Infussion said

I can help as I’m Polish. CZAJ is pronounced in the same way as CHAI in other languages.

No need to go figure when it’s this simple :)

RiverTea said

Thanks for sharing! So it’s CHAI all the way!

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pavl said

Just like russian, bulgarian, and romanian, it’s also чай in ukranian

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Stella select said

차(cha) in Korean,
(お)茶 (o-cha) in Japanese.

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Armenians call it թեյ (tey)

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Rasseru said

I tried to find out what it was in khosian (Khoisan?) Which is a set of African languages with clicks in, hoping to find something different.. But I can’t find a dictionary. Bushman and kung are some of the languages that use clicks

It’s probably just ‘tea’ anyway, haha

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Psyck said

Tea is called Chai/Cha in North Indian languages like Hindi/Bengali/etc. While this refers to all forms of tea, it commonly means the type of tea brewed by boiling powdered tea with milk and sweetener (in British English the word Chai is exclusively used for this method of preparation).

Tea is called Tea in South Indian languages like Telugu/Tamil/etc.

http://coffeetea.about.com/od/historyculture/a/WordsForTea.htm

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Referring back to @Dinosara post. The international Te & Cha variation originates from Minnan (Hokkien) language spoken in South Fujian (mainly Quanzhou/Xiamen) and Mandarin. In Mandarin the character 茶 is pronounced as cha, whereas in Minnan it is Te/Tee.

In Cantonese it is pronounced tsa4 (chai).

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Mr Tea said

The word “tea” originates from the trade routes. The countries that brought tea via the sea routes use words that began with the letter tea – ‘tea’ in English, ‘Tee’ in German, ‘the’ in French, ‘te’ in Italian. All variations are borrowed of the term ’t’e’ borrowed from min nan hua, a Chinese dialect borrowed from Fujian province.

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