From: me@yahoo.com   
      
   On 2024-12-17 12:15:22 +0000, Christian Weisgerber said:   
      
   > 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   
      
   Thanks. Very interesting. I wouldn't have guessed that tea and cha had   
   a common origin.   
      
   Your map is interesting, but as Chile is (or used to be) as much of a   
   tea-drinking nation as the UK or Russia, I'm surprised there is no   
   symbol for it. Pablo Neruda was at one time the Chilean consul in   
   Ceylon. One day he was approached by a British colonial official who   
   wanted to what they did with all the tea they imported from Ceylon. We   
   drink it, he said. Incidentally, they call it té, as in peninsular   
   Spanish.   
      
      
   --   
   Athel -- French and British, living in Marseilles for 37 years; mainly   
   in England until 1987.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)