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| Friday 02 Nov 2007: Tea or Cha |
| Two different pronunciations for the Chinese character for tea have made their way into different languages around the world: one is tê, from the Amoy dialect from Southern Fujian, the other, chá, comes from Cantonese. The "tê-version" (e.g. in Dutch, English, French, Indonesian) probably originated from the Dutch who traded with Chinese from Fujian, while the "chá-version" (e.g. in Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Japanese) originated from being exposed to sources from other regions of China. |