In case you didn’t know, I’m a fan of languages. Currently, I speak 4 but I’d like to speak at least 7 in the future. I’ve had this love and fascination for languages since a while back. Ever since I can remember I’ve been interested in the why of certain words or phrases. Besides, I love to think that every new language or words that I learn takes me closer to the country where it is spoken. For that same reason, a couple of days ago I was drinking a cup of hot tea in the afternoon and this question popped into my head. How do we say “tea” in other languages? Since this is such a universal drink that everyone knows about, I thought it would be nice to share the answer for this question with you guys.
There are just two ways of saying “tea”, both words came from ancient China, but the way they expanded throughout the world is an impressive fact. In those countries where the pronunciation is “cha” it’s because tea was spread across land, moving through the Silk Route. For example, in Portuguese, Arabic and Mandarin they say chá, in Hindi it’s called chay and in Chinese, the character for tea is 茶, it's pronounced differently in different varieties of Chinese; however, it is written the same in them all.
Now, in the countries where tea is pronounced like “te” is because it was spread over water. The Dutch ports in east Asia were Taiwan and Fujian and in these places they used the pronunciation te. Thus, thanks to the VOC or the Dutch East India Company, we can now say té in Spanish, tea in English, thé in French and tee in German.
The curious thing about all of this is that there is of course an exception. Those places that use neither of this terminology, it's simply because they produced their own tea, so they never had that tea importation. For example, in Burmese, tea is known as lakphak.
What all of this explanation means is that if in your country you have the pronunciation te, then tea arrived to you by sea. If you have the pronunciation of cha, then tea arrived in your country by land.
Below, you’ll be able to see a map that showcases better what I’ve explained.
