Words in a language can tell us a lot about the people who speak that language and their
surrounding environment. Italian has a lengthy list of commonly used words for different types
of coffee and pasta in comparison with other languages, highlighting to linguists the central
role of food in Italian culture. French spoken in Canada uses words which originally come from
North American indigenous languages, like Mi'kmaq, Cree, and Wendat. This highlights
the historic relationships between some indigenous nations and the first French settlers in Québec.
The origin and history of words, known as etymology, can often provide us with a window
into the past. In this video, we're going to talk about the fascinating history of the word
tea and discover why many of the world's language use only one of two words for this hot beverage.
It's really common for words to be borrowed from one language to another. And often the words that
are borrowed from one language to another reveals some history about those speakers of the language
who lived however many years ago. Common reasons for word borrowing
are geographical location, cultural influence, colonization, migration, or trade.
The origin of the word for tea made its way around the world because of international
trade relationships with China, who was the main producer of tea hundreds of years ago.
Tea became common in Europe around the 17th century. The tea leaf comes from a plant
which is native to southeast Asia in modern day countries extending as far west as India
and as far east as China. Today, tea is still a really popular drink around the world.
In a study of the world's languages, about 37% of languages around the world that were included in
the study use a word that is similar to thé or tea. And about 48% of languages studied use a
word that is similar to cha or chai. Which means, by the way, when you order a Chai
Tea, you're literally saying a Tea Tea. The origin of Chai Tea comes from the original term Masala
chai. Speakers of other languages incorrectly attributed the distinct flavour to the word chai,
meaning tea, and not masala, meaning mixed spice. "If you're enjoying this video so far,
I'd really appreciate it if you could support my channel by liking this video.
I'd also love it if you subscribed to my channel to stay up to date on new content
and to be part of our language-loving community. Both the words cha and te originate from
Sino-Tibtean languages. The word cha originates from possibly Mandarin,
if not another Sinitic [saɪ'nɪtɪk] language spoken in China which uses the word cha also. The word
te originates from one of the Southern Min languages spoken in Fujian province of China.
The Dutch traded for tea with people from Fujian province. The Dutch exported this tea to their
colonies in Malaysia and Indonesia and then later to the rest of Europe. Along with the tea,
the Dutch's use of the Southern Min word té also got passed to their colonies and other countries
in Europe who traded with the Dutch to get tea. Prior to the Dutch trading with Fujian for tea,
the Portuguese were the first Europeans to import tea
in the 16th century via Macau. The word cha which became the word for tea in Portuguese originating
from Cantonese or other similar languages. Fast forward a few hundred years to today,
the languages with the form CHA had tea introduced to them by land which is why much
of Asia and eastern Europe uses a word similar to CHA. The languages with the form TEA or TE
had tea introduced to them by sea, via the Dutch. One final piece of the puzzle is why does English
use TEA when the original form was TE. Well, as English transitioned from Middle English to
Modern English, many of the vowel sounds transformed in what became known as the Great
Vowel Shift which is covered in another video. A quick example is the eː sound became pronounced as
iː. After the té was introduced to England, the é became pronounced as ea in tea. The word tea then
spread to the various English colonies and the speakers of local languages in those colonies,
such as Yoruba /'jorəbə/ in Nigeria, Cocopa in California, and !Xóõ /ˈkoʊ/ in Botswana.
This video relied heavily on a chapter written by linguist Östen Dahl written in the World Atlas
of Language Structure Online. This resource is available free online if you'd like to learn more
about some fundamental foundations of linguistics. "Let me know in the comments which word the
languages that you know uses for TEA. Subscribe to my channel to learn more
about the world's languages.
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