LANGUAGE OF TEA

茶

The word tea comes from the Chinese language and the Chinese character looks similar to the one for tree, so the word was originally named for the plant not the beverage.  The character can also mean eye lid which corresponds to the Japanese legend that a Buddhist monk while meditating fell asleep and was angry about his weakness, so he cut off his eye lids, threw them to the ground and a plant grew which refreshed and kept him awake!

The Chinese character can be pronounced two different ways – one is ‘te’ and the other is ‘cha’ and both have made their way into other languages around the world.  The only place where the word for the beverage is unrelated to tea is South American, where the original beverage of choice was yerba mate, so any tea is referred to as mate.  The word for tea in most languages follows the origin in the different countries.   Tea imported into most of the European countries by ship use a word quite similar to ‘te.’  Other parts of the world, where tea came over the land by traders, use a word similar to ‘cha.’

The word for tea in various languages around the world:

• Afrikaans: tee
• Arabic: tchai (شَاي)
• Czech: čaj
• Dutch: thee
• English: tea
• French: thé 
• German: tee
• Greek: tsa'i (τσάι)
• Hebrew: teh (תה)
• Irish: tae
• Italian: tè 
• Japanese: tscha (ちゃ) 
• Norwegian: te
• Portuguese: chá 
• Romania: ceai
• Russian: tchai (чай) 
• Spanish: té
• Swedish: te
• Turkish: çay
• Yiddish: tay (טיי)

"So whether you eat or drink, 

or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God"
I Corinthians 10:31