Dario Niedermann > wrote:
>With a few minor exceptions, there are really only two ways to say "tea"
>in the world. One is like the English term -- te in Spanish and tee in
>Afrikaans are two examples. The other is some variation of cha, like
>chay in Hindi. Both versions come from China. How they spread around
>the world offers a clear picture of how globalization worked before
>"globalization" was a term anybody used.

This theory is an interesting one, but perhaps it is more fundamental than
that. There are many nearly universal words. Nearly every language has
some derivation of "mama" or "mother" to describe one's parent. It is not
learned, it is some of the very limited innate language that the brain comes
with.

"Tea" and "Chai" are also like this, they are words that come in the brain
at birth because the brain itself is designed to subsist on tea. Tea is
nature's most perfect beverage: it is cooling in hot weather and warming in
cold. It wakes you up in the morning and puts you to sleep at night. The
human being and the tea plant co-evolved and neither one can survive
independently.

In comparison with the so-called "coffee," itself merely a repulsive sort
of burned bean soup, tea is fundamentally integral to the process of human
life. So it is no wonder that the mind is born with an innate need for
tea and consequently for the vocabulary to request it. "Chai, Chai!"
cries the child. "Forget my mother's milk, I want Fujian oolong!" That
is how we get our words for tea in all languages.
--scott


--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."