Tea in other languages
I would’ve added the Romanian word if you didn’t! My mother’s from Romania. Funny you should choose that one as an example since not many people (at least people I know) speak of Romania.
In Russian, it is чай, pronounced chay.
We wanted to illustrate different forms of the word “tea”. Thanks for sharing. If you’re mother’s from Romania, you must know the language very well. And I see you also know Russian, which I find a very nice sounding language but really hard to learn.
/embarrassed/ I actually don’t speak a word, since she asked me when I was very little if I wanted to learn, and I said NO. I don’t even remember it happening. As for the Russian, I looked it up ._. The only other language I know is Japanese.
You don’t have to feel embarrassed as it was a choice you made when you were little. I guess it is a matter of preferences. It’s never too late to start learn a new language and the fact that you have a native speaker of a foreign language in your home can be really helpful. On the other hand we admire you for the Japanese, one of the nicest languages to learn if you’re passionate about tea and Asian culture.
She had asked because she thought my growing up with two languages would create some difficulty for me. I actually have little interest in learning Romanian, although I do want to learn Russian at some point. Learning Japanese has allowed me to study in Japan, where I was introduced to Japanese teas, which I adore drinking.
Te in Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk), Icelandic, and Faroese.
Also чай in Ukrainian.
“Tī” in Maori.
He kapu tī māu? – Would you like a cup of tea?
My pleasure.
He – as in “hey” or “heh” rather than “hee”,
kapu – caw-poo,
tī – short “tea”
mau – maao (like Chairman Mao, but with a little more time spent on the “a”).
In Polish it seems like a totally different word: HERBATA
Now the ex-linguist in me will be doing research on this ethymology!
In Chinese, “cha”, written 茶
In Bulgarian, чай, pronounced as “chai”, same as Russian I guess.
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