Tea in other languages
We are talking about tea varieties, companies, recipes and so on, but have you ever wondered how do we say “tea” in other languages? In Romanian is “ceai”, for instance, while in Spanish is “té”. How about other tea words from other languages?
thee in Dutch. :)
i believe the world tea is almost universal, like mama.
Tee in German.
It does seem very universal.
thé in French, te in Swedish, tee in Finnish, tè in Italian!
Te or The in Danish. Both spelllings are correct, but the latter more common. I prefer the former myself. The h is silent.
τσάι (tsai) in Greek
This topic made me look up the etymology of tea:
1650s, earlier chaa (1590s, from Portuguese cha), from Malay teh and directly from Chinese (Amoy dialect) t’e, in Mandarin ch’a. First known in Paris 1635, the practice of drinking tea was first introduced to England 1644.
The distribution of the different forms of the word reflects the spread of use of the beverage. The modern English form, along with French thé, Spanish te, German Tee, etc., derive via Dutch thee from the Amoy form, reflecting the role of the Dutch as the chief importers of the leaves (through the Dutch East India Company, from 1610). The Portuguese word (attested from 1550s) came via Macao; and Russian chai, Persian cha, Greek tsai, Arabic shay, and Turkish çay all came overland from the Mandarin form.
In ASL (American Sign Language):
Also “cha” in Korean, written 차
(as a tea addict, it was something I looked up right away once I started studying korean)