Re: Teaching and Learning English in Hong Kong

From: Joe Fineman (joe_f_at_verizon.net)
Date: 03/22/05 

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2005 13:36:37 GMT

phippsmartin@hotmail.com writes:

> When I was visiting Cornwall, England a few years back I heard tea
> refered to as "cha" and I told my parents that the word came from
> Mandarian Chinese. In Taiwan, the word for tea sounds like "tay",
> which is precisely how the word is pronounced in French, and
> probably Portuguese too I imagine.

That was the original pronunciation in English, too, according to the
OED. It coexisted with the present standard "tee" for a couple of
centuries, and survives in dialects:

  It's work all day
  For sugar in your tay
  Down behind the railway

(U.S., 19th century, probably Irish laborers). 

-- 
---  Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net
||:  Nothing knits man to man like the frequent passage from hand  :||
||:  to hand of cash.                                              :||

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