A cup of tea... or cha?
Ch’a, Chá, Chai, Té, Tè, Te, Tea, Tee, Thé, Thee… are only some of the versions of this drink’s name. Apparently they fall in 2 different categories, and some try to assert the split between the two as depending on the way this drink/plant reached its geographic target, as pictured above. Two incoherences spring to sight: Portugal could hardly be reached by land, as an exceptional case in the context of western Europe, and even less so could Brazil – pictured on the right-hand side, together with the rest of the Americas. So, perhaps we need a better explanation for the adoption of one of the two main expressions for tea. Let’s give the geographic origin of the contact between the plant/drink and the adopting people/country a chance, and focus on Portugal, as the Brazilian case looks too obvious to me: they got it from their colonial power.
Please indulge me quoting myself from previous chapter: “The Portuguese are among the few, if not the only Europeans that use a different original Chinese expression “chá”, instead of tea and its derivatives. Cockney English uses cha or rather char too,” as I was surprisingly confronted with by my mother’s next door neighbour in England, when delving there for my one academic year long sabbatical. “The Portuguese probably first came across the drink in the Canton region, and used the local word (ch’a). Later, other Europeans encountered it in the Tonkin region and also adopted the local word (t’e).” (José E. Mendes Ferrão, “A aventura das plantas e os descobrimentos portugueses”, 2005, 3rd edition, p.200)
Let’s move a few steps back: “Did you know that most of the world uses the same two words for tea? One variation is the one used in English (tea), French (thé), Spanish (té) and Dutch (thee). The other is a variation of chá (in Mandarin and Cantonese), such as chai in Hindi, shay in Arabic and chay in Russian. There’s an interesting reason for this.
Both words originate in China, which is widely believed to be the ‘home of tea’ and where the plant was first domesticated, and come from the Chinese character: 茶. In Mandarin and Cantonese, it’s pronounced ‘cha’. Countries around the world that use the word ‘cha’ originally imported tea over land, through the Silk Road, from the northern regions of China where they pronounce the word ‘cha’.
However, in the dialect spoken in the southern coastal province of Fujian, the word is pronounced ‘te’. This port is where 17th century Dutch merchants traded tea to bring to Europe, bringing back with them the pronunciation of ‘tea’. There are, of course, exceptions to this. But for the most part, wherever you are in the world, there’s a good chance you’ll know how to ask for a cup of tea with just those two words!” (From “A cup of tea… or cha?”, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, as accessed October 8, 2025)
“The fact is that in the several dialects or languages of the great China there are variations of the word and according to the region where the European merchants made business, they heard a certain sound for tea which they later adopted in their countries. In Macao, where the Portuguese established and traded from the 16th century on, the version cha was the one they heard and imported…which resulted in our sweet and tender chazinho. 🙂 Of course they imported the word as they imported the product as well as the delicate recipients to serve it, like the porcelain little bowls you can see above.” (From the blog “Artes, livros e velharias”, by Maria Andrade, as accessed Oct.8, 2025)
So, perhaps we could conclude that the Portuguese word for tea (chá) didn’t come overland, but oversea, and just arrived here before the Dutch brought it along as ‘tea’ oversea just later than the Portuguese and from a different original region.
In this context please let me share with you the trailblazing works by two Portuguese authors, namely João Rodrigues Tçuzu (The Interpreter) (“A arte do chá”, Livros de Bordo, 2019), that he wrote around 1620, after many years of delving in Japan and China, and Wenceslau de Moraes (“O culto do chá”, Vega, 1996, originally published in 1905), born and raised in Lisbon, who went native in Japan around the begin of the 20th century, after a long and successful military and diplomatic career. (You may check on him at this other chapter of this blog/book/website of mine)
Rui Manuel Esteves da Silva (“O chá em Portugal. História e hábitos de consumo”, Master degree dissertation at the Minho University, 2014) reaffirms the arrival of the tea plant/drink in Europe by the hand of the Dutch around 1610, and according to him the Dutch were responsible for the first time tea was cultivated outside Japan and China around 1684, namely in Java. (ibidem p.26) Silva dates the first importation of tea/chá to Portugal by merchants and missionaries at around 1580. (ibidem p.34) The cultivation of tea would have been introduced in Brazil, then a Portuguese colony, in the year of 1812 or 1816, according to the respective source. (ibidem p.36-37). From here tea plants and seeds would have been unsuccessfully imported to continental Portugal, and successfully to the Azores archipelago around 1820, mostly to S. Miguel island, with the assistance of a couple of Chinese specialists, where only 2 significant producers subsist, the only in all of Europe. (ibidem p.47-79)
