Worldwide Pronounciations Of Tea

Chinese character tea (茶cha) in 108 different ways 

‘Tea' and all its worldwide variations in spelling and pronunciation come from China. There are two pronunciations have made their way into other languages around the world. 

1). Derivatives from cha-the Mandarin pronunciation of the character “Tea” (茶 chá) 

One common pronunciation is chá, used by the Cantonese dialect spoken around the ports of Guangzhou (Canton), Hong Kong, Macau, and in overseas Chinese communities, as well as in the Mandarin dialect of northern China. This term was used in ancient times to describe the first flush harvest of tea. 

 

Language	Name	Language	Name	Language	Name	Language	Name	Language	Name
Albanian	çaj	Amharic	ሻይ shai	Arabic	شاي shāy	Aramaic	pronounced chai	Assamese	saah
Azerbaijani	çay	Bangla	চা cha	Bosnian	čaj	Bulgarian	чай chai	Capampangan	cha
Cebuano	tsa	Croatian	čaj	Czech	čaj (2)	English	chai	Hindi	चाय chai
Tagalog	tsaa	Georgian	ჩაი, chai	Greek	τσάι tsái	Gujarati	ચા cha	Khasi	sha
Japanese	茶, チャ, cha	Kannada	ಚಹಾ Chaha	Kazakh	шай shai	Kyrgyz	чай, chai	Malayalam	ചായ, "chaaya"
Konkani	चा cha	Korean	茶,차, cha	Lao	ชา, saa	Macedonian	чај, čaj	Uzbek	choy
Marathi	चहा chahaa	Mongolian	цай, thai	Nepali	chiya चिया	Oriya	cha	Pashto	چای chai
Persian	چای chai	Punjabi	چا ਚਾਹ chah	Portuguese	chá	Romanian	ceai	Russian	чай, chai
Serbian	чај, čaj	Slovak	čaj	Slovene	čaj	Somali	shaah	Swahili	chai
Sylheti	saah	Tagalog	tsaa	Thai	ชา, chaa	Tibetan	ཇ་ ja	Tlingit	cháayu
Turkish	çay	Turkmen	çay	Ukrainian	чай chai	Urdu	چا ٔےchai
Vietnamese	*trà and chè	Tamil	*தெய்னேர்/டே theyneer and tee	Kenyan language	cai kikuyu	Khmer	តែ tae

2). Derivatives from tê - Xiamen (Amoy) Fujian Dialect "的" (tey)            

The other common pronunciation is tê, which comes from the Hokkien dialect, spoken in Fujian Province, Taiwan and by expatriate Chinese in Indonesia, Malaya and Singapore. It reached the West particularly from the Amoy Min Nan dialect, spoken around the port of Xiamen (Amoy), once a major point of contact with Western European traders. This pronunciation is believed to come from the old words for tea 梌 (tú) or 荼 (tú).        

 

Language	Name	Language	Name	Language	Name	Language	Name	Language	Name
Afrikaans	tee	Armenian	տե te	Catalan	te	Czech	té or thé (1)	Danish	te
Dutch	thee	English	tea	Esperanto	teo	Estonian	tee	Faroese	te
Finnish	tee	French	thé	West Frisian	tee	Galician	té	German	Tee
Hebrew	תה, te	Hungarian	tea	Icelandic	te	Indonesian	teh	Irish	tae
Italian	tè or thè	Javanese	tèh	Korean	茶,다 da [ta](2)	scientific Latin	thea	Latvian	tēja
Leonese	té	Limburgish	tiè	Low Saxon[disambiguation needed]	Tee [tʰɛˑɪ] or Tei [tʰaˑɪ]	Malay	teh	Malayalam	തേയില Theyila
Norwegian	te	Occitan	tè	Sesotho	tea,chá	Scots Gaelic	tì, teatha	Sinhalese	තෙ thé
Spanish	té	Scots	tea [tiː] ~ [teː]	Sundanese	entèh	Swedish	te [tʰeː]	Tamil	தேநீர் thenīr (nīr = water) "theyilai" means "tea leaf" (ilai=leaf)
Telugu	తేనీళ్ళు tēnīru	Welsh	te	Khmer	តែtae	Vietnamese	chè [cɛ]