From: naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   On 2024-12-17, Athel Cornish-Bowden  wrote:   
      
   > Something that I've found curious is that although many languages   
   > (English, French, German, Spanish etc.) use words similar to "tea",   
   > some (Russian, Portuguese, Chinese etc.) use ones similar to "cha".   
   > (Having said that, English has "char" as a slang word.)   
      
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea   
     Nearly all of the words for tea worldwide originate from Chinese   
     pronunciations of the word 茶, and they fall into three broad groups:   
     te, cha and chai, present in English as tea, cha or char, and chai. The   
     earliest of the three to enter English is cha, which came in the 1590s   
     via the Portuguese, who traded in Macao and picked up the Cantonese   
     pronunciation of the word. The more common tea form arrived in the   
     17th century via the Dutch, who acquired it either indirectly from the   
     Malay teh, or directly from the tê pronunciation in Min Chinese. The   
     third form chai (meaning "spiced tea") originated from a northern   
     Chinese pronunciation of cha, which travelled overland to Central Asia   
     and Persia where it picked up a Persian ending yi, and entered English   
     via Hindustani in the 20th century.   
      
   I've seem a better map I can no longer find, but here's the one   
   from WALS:   
   https://wals.info/feature/138A   
      
   --   
   Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)