"CHA",
"TAY", "TEA"
The
Chinese character "TEA" written with Chinese
calligraphy brush. |
In Chinese dialects,
pronunciation of "tea" is divided into two classes
based on phonetic similarity. In mandarin, "tea" is
"CHA"; in XiaMenese (FuJian province),
"tea" is "TAY".
CHA and TAY had different
time and route spreading out to the rest of the world.
It dated back to the 5th
century that CHA went beyond the Chinese border. Japanese
simply use the Chinese character of tea (see insert on right)
for tea. In Persia, tea was CHA and then later evolved into
CHAI in Arabic, CHAY in Turkish and CHAI in Russian. Tea was
also brought to India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and Bangladesh
where it's called CHA.
TAY started spreading later
than CHA but had reached much further than CHA did. Near the
end of the Ming Dynasty, AD 1644, British merchants set up
trading posts in XiaMen and came into contact with Chinese
tea. What the XiaMen people called TAY, the British spelled as
TEA. "Tea" then later has become wildly accepted by
the English-speaking world. The French THE and German TEE are
also decedents of TAY.
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