Tea
from Tay to Tea
The name for tea is derived not from the standard
(Mandarin) Chinese name cha but from the same word
in the Amoy dia-lect. The Dutch carried on their earliest
China trade from Java, where they met Chinese junks
out of the port of Amoy (Xiamen) in Fujian province,
just across the strait from Taiwan. Thus they learned
the Amoy name tea (pronounced "tay," but
more like "day") and took it to Europe.
As all European countries except Russia and Portugal
bought their first tea from the Dutch, they too used
this name. The Portugese, who traded out of the port
of Macao, near Guangzhou, base their word on the Cantonese-derived
cha.
It is still unclear whether "tay" or "tea"
first came to England. In his 1660 diary entry Samuel
Pepys wrote "tee," but in 1711, Alexander
Pope still rhymed it with "obey" in "The
Rape of the Eock," a sound which may have been
a fashionable borrowing from the French. In poems
from 1712 and 1720 it rhymes indisputably width "knee,"
indicating that a change must have taken place around
that time. The Irish and some others still say "tay."
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