The Finnish language is wonderful, and there is a link between the verb "to do" (tehdä) and "tea" (tee).<p>"tee tee" : You say this when you are a foreigner (like myself) and you want to tell a Finn to make tea. Saying "tee tee" will make two things happen simultaneously and immediately: 1) the Finn will switch to English, and 2) if it's your girlfriend or wife, she will tell you to make your own damn tea. Less certain and immediate is whether you actually get a cup of tea. Correct, but less interesting: "tee teetä".<p>"te teette teetä" : A correct way of either commanding a group of people to make some tea, or of letting them know that the are, in fact, making tea, ie: You all are making some tea.<p>(Read "ee" above as a kind of extended "eh": eeehhh, and "ä" as the short a as in "hat" (like, "hät" is pronounced exactly like hat is))
This reminds me of a series of etymological (European) maps that I found once and really enjoyed[1]. I geek out over the footprints that history leaves all over language.<p>[1] <a href="https://m.imgur.com/a/zrznb" rel="nofollow">https://m.imgur.com/a/zrznb</a>
Reminds me of this nice map of what tea is called across Europe: <a href="https://jakubmarian.com/tea-in-european-languages-map/" rel="nofollow">https://jakubmarian.com/tea-in-european-languages-map/</a><p>As a Swede, I can just add that the spelling come in quite many forms: te (official), té, the, thé, tea...
This reminded me of an article about how sea-faring cultures call it "tea", and land-trading cultures call it "cha".<p><a href="https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land-and-sea-to-conquer-the-world/" rel="nofollow">https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land...</a>
In Polish language we use herbata word. It is a herb tea. Its unique for whole Europe. I think mostly because it was not popular in Poland for ages. People drinked here honey, milk, mead, beer. Compared to it tea was lame. People added wine, ice cream and other stuff to make it taste better.<p>Also, there were other brews, for example from mint before here. So herbata was not exciting in any way. But eventually it made it through and is now main beverage here with a distinct name across whole Europe.
There was an article that discussed this in the Summer 2019 edition of Lapham’s Quarterly dedicated to ‘Trade’.<p><a href="https://www.laphamsquarterly.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.laphamsquarterly.org</a>
> English has all three forms: cha or char (both pronounced /ˈtʃɑː/), attested from the late 16th century; tea, from the 17th; and chai, from the 20th.<p>I've never, ever encountered "cha" or "char" in my English speaking country (US) - is this something commonly encountered in England?
I came here hoping for this instead: <a href="https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-tea" rel="nofollow">https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-tea</a>