
Etymology of tea - thewarpaint
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea
======
rendall
The Finnish language is wonderful, and there is a link between the verb "to
do" (tehdä) and "tea" (tee).

"tee tee" : You say this when you are a foreigner (like myself) and you want
to tell a Finn to make tea. Saying "tee tee" will make two things happen
simultaneously and immediately: 1) the Finn will switch to English, and 2) if
it's your girlfriend or wife, she will tell you to make your own damn tea.
Less certain and immediate is whether you actually get a cup of tea. Correct,
but less interesting: "tee teetä".

"te teette teetä" : A correct way of either commanding a group of people to
make some tea, or of letting them know that the are, in fact, making tea, ie:
You all are making some tea.

(Read "ee" above as a kind of extended "eh": eeehhh, and "ä" as the short a as
in "hat" (like, "hät" is pronounced exactly like hat is))

~~~
dullgiulio
Estonian is even worse, as "tee" is also road (in Finnish, "tie").

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wutbrodo
This reminds me of a series of etymological (European) maps that I found once
and really enjoyed[1]. I geek out over the footprints that history leaves all
over language.

[1] [https://m.imgur.com/a/zrznb](https://m.imgur.com/a/zrznb)

~~~
yonderboy
Do you have a source on who made those? They're pretty fascinating and I'd
love to learn more about how they were made.

~~~
wutbrodo
Some redditor, apparently:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/1pxjuh/interesti...](https://www.reddit.com/r/etymology/comments/1pxjuh/interesting_european_etymology_maps/)

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arketyp
Reminds me of this nice map of what tea is called across Europe:
[https://jakubmarian.com/tea-in-european-languages-
map/](https://jakubmarian.com/tea-in-european-languages-map/)

As a Swede, I can just add that the spelling come in quite many forms: te
(official), té, the, thé, tea...

~~~
DagAgren
Completely missing out that "char" is used in English.

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peterburkimsher
This reminded me of an article about how sea-faring cultures call it "tea",
and land-trading cultures call it "cha".

[https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-
land...](https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land-and-sea-
to-conquer-the-world/)

------
tomaszs
In Polish language we use herbata word. It is a herb tea. Its unique for whole
Europe. I think mostly because it was not popular in Poland for ages. People
drinked here honey, milk, mead, beer. Compared to it tea was lame. People
added wine, ice cream and other stuff to make it taste better.

Also, there were other brews, for example from mint before here. So herbata
was not exciting in any way. But eventually it made it through and is now main
beverage here with a distinct name across whole Europe.

~~~
pedrosorio
> Its unique for whole Europe.

Almost. Unsurprisingly, given their history, the only word for tea in
Lithuanian is the same - arbata - borrowed from Polish.

In Belarus they also use it in parallel with the Russian word (no idea which
one is more common in daily usage).

~~~
tomaszs
Poland ans Lithuania was a union. Maybe it has something to do with it. We are
like brothers and sisters

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qubex
There was an article that discussed this in the Summer 2019 edition of
Lapham’s Quarterly dedicated to ‘Trade’.

[https://www.laphamsquarterly.org](https://www.laphamsquarterly.org)

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tropdrop
> English has all three forms: cha or char (both pronounced /ˈtʃɑː/), attested
> from the late 16th century; tea, from the 17th; and chai, from the 20th.

I've never, ever encountered "cha" or "char" in my English speaking country
(US) - is this something commonly encountered in England?

~~~
wffurr
It's a 16th century word that is now extremely rare.

From the article, OED definition 3 for "char":
[https://www.lexico.com/definition/char#h69854260165380](https://www.lexico.com/definition/char#h69854260165380)

The main article on tea in the history and origin section has some of the
earliest attestations in English cited:

"The first record of tea in English came from a letter written by Richard
Wickham, who ran an East India Company office in Japan, writing to a merchant
in Macao requesting "the best sort of chaw" in 1615. Peter Mundy, a traveller
and merchant who came across tea in Fujian in 1637, wrote, "chaa – only water
with a kind of herb boyled in it ".[45][46]"

~~~
ptsneves
Macao was a portuguese colony and until today the regular word for tea in
portuguese is chá,read cha in English. Just found out that tea in spanish is
not chá, which is very interesting given the huge commonality in portuguese
and Spanish. Also as per Wikipedia chá is mandar

Slightly connected: I Just recently learned frkm Wikipedia that the word
coco/côco from the coconut fruit comes from a portuguese folklore figure that
i never heard of. Which is weird because I am portuguese and my parents also
never heard of any similar folklore. We have a an expression which translates
to "break the coco laughing" which i always took to be related to the fruit
and now I think it may be a remnant of the folklore figure that gave the name
to the coconut fruit.

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_(folklore)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coco_\(folklore\))

~~~
felipelemos
I am from Brazil and while I never heard of Coco with that meaning, "Cuca" is
a very known evil character from a very popular series of children's books
called "Sítio do Picapau Amarelo"[1], and I would assume that its heavily
influenced by the same legend, while in case of the books she is a witch and
based more based on a dragon or an alligator than a bugbear. You can see it
here from one of the several TV adaptation. [2]

Also, based on the series there is this popular music "A Cuca te pega", or in
a free English translation: "The Cuca catch you". [3]

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%ADtio_do_Picapau_Amarel...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%ADtio_do_Picapau_Amarelo_\(fictional_farm\))

[2] [https://youtu.be/bIiujEcXcRw](https://youtu.be/bIiujEcXcRw)

[3] [https://youtu.be/y4YLN0ZQdyk](https://youtu.be/y4YLN0ZQdyk)

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aaronblohowiak
I came here hoping for this instead: [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-
tea](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-tea)

~~~
rendall
Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but here's an upvote to counter it!

