Fun and fascinating Saturday read for all you armchair linguists & homebody historians (like me) about the Chinese origins of the 2 words used for tea in the world. "Cha" is from Mandarin Chinese, and has been adopted by many many languages. "Tea" is from the Min-nan dialect spoken in Fujian province and Taiwan, and made its way around the world thanks to Dutch traders. Both words are used frequently on a daily basis here in Taiwan today, where both dialects (Mandarin & Min-nan, referred to simply as "Taiwanese" in English) of Chinese are spoken by most people. …see more