The Epic Origins of the Word ‘Tea’

譯/鄧志輝

As you relax over a cup of tea, it’s easy to forget that wars have been fought over the stuff. That it sparks fierce debate in families and among colleagues. Should it be taken plain or with milk? Can it be sweetened with honey or indulged with butter? Should it be drunk in the afternoon, as the Europeans do, or is it better taken in the morning, as those in China prefer? Yet it is this divisive beverage that, over the centuries, has bound cultures together.

當你沏一杯茶悠閑品嘗的時候，很難會想到，眼前這“杯中之物”在歷史上曾多次引發(fā)戰(zhàn)爭，到今天也還令家人或同事面紅耳赤爭論不休：沏茶時應(yīng)該只用開水沖泡還是該加牛奶？可以兌蜂蜜增甜或恣意加入黃油嗎？是該像歐洲人那樣午后喝茶，還是最好像中國人習(xí)慣的那樣在上午喝？不過，盡管分歧如此巨大，千百年來，卻正是這一飲品將不同文化緊密聯(lián)系起來。

How China discovered tea

[2] According to archaeological evidence, tea was first cultivated in China around 1600 B.C., but is said to have been discovered long before that.Legend has it that in 2437 B.C., a deity1deity神。named Shennong was sitting with a cauldron of boiling water next to a bush that suddenly burst aflame. The fi re dried up the leaves of the bush and the heat carried them through the air,dropping them into Shennong’s caul-

“茶”之為飲，發(fā)乎中華

[2]考古學(xué)上的證據(jù)顯示，茶葉種植始于公元前1600年左右時的中國，但據(jù)稱茶葉的發(fā)現(xiàn)則遠早于此。相傳在公元前2437年，神農(nóng)氏坐在一鍋開水旁，大鍋邊上的一叢灌木突然燒著了，燒焦的葉子隨熱浪飄到空中，落到神農(nóng)的鍋里。dron. Shennong tasted the leafy water and he could see that tea had the power to counteract the poisonous effects of some 70 herbs.

[3] In the early years of tea cultivation in China, the leaves were unprocessed and had a bitter taste, earning the resulting drink the name ‘荼 tu’, meaning ‘bitter vegetable’. Mandarin’s current word for tea, ‘茶 cha’, didn’t come into recorded existence until 760 C.E., when a scholar named Lu Yu wrote theChajing,or theClassic of Tea, in which he mistakenly omitted a cross stroke from the character ‘tu’, resulting in a much different word: cha.神農(nóng)嘗過泡了葉子的水，發(fā)現(xiàn)茶葉能解近70種草藥之毒。

[3]在中國茶葉種植的早期，葉子未經(jīng)加工，味帶苦澀，因此得名“荼”（音tu），意指“苦菜”。普通話里現(xiàn)在所用的“茶”字（音cha）直到公元760年才在典籍中出現(xiàn)，當時學(xué)者陸羽著《茶經(jīng)》，一時失誤錯將“荼”字上方的橫線遺漏，結(jié)果出現(xiàn)這個完全不同的“茶”字。

How the word ‘cha’ travelled across the world

[4] For nearly a thousand years, tea stayed the secret of the East. Then, in the 1500s, the Portuguese arrived in China. They’d travelled to the Far East hoping to gain a monopoly on the spice trade. But soon after tasting the brew for the fi rst time, the explorers quickly realised its potential and decided to focus on exporting tea instead. The Portuguese called the drink cha, just like the people of southern China did. From the port of Canton2Canton（英語舊稱）廣州?！猘round modern-day Guangzhou—Hong Kong, and Macau,the Portuguese shipped the now-processed leaves down through Indonesia,

cha隨茶飲，走向世界

[4]近千年里，茶葉一直是東方世界里一種神秘的存在。然后到16世紀，葡萄牙人抵達中國。他們來遠東的目的是想壟斷香料貿(mào)易，但在中國境內(nèi)第一次品嘗到茶之后，這些探險者們意識到其市場潛力，很快決定改為專事茶葉出口貿(mào)易。他們學(xué)中國南方人稱茶葉為cha，并從澳門港和當時廣州（大體相當于今天的廣州）的港口香港出發(fā)，將加工under the southern tip of Africa, and back up to western Europe.

[5] But long before the root word‘cha’ made its way across the oceans to Portugal, another trade route had been spreading tea westward. These tea leaves were traversing China’s Yunnan province along the ‘Tea-Horse’road. With bricks of tea stacked up high on the carriers’ backs, the leaf travelled to India via Persia, where the Chinese‘cha’ turned into the Persianchay’.Depending on the region of India, in most parts tea is known by the Hindi word,chai’. It is also calledcha’ in Bengali, andchaya’ in Malayalam3馬拉雅拉姆語，又譯馬拉雅蘭語。印度克拉拉邦馬拉雅里人（本義為“山地人”）的語言，是9—10世紀時從泰米爾語分化出來的一種語. But while most Indian dialects use some variation of the root word ‘cha’ to describe tea, there is one exception…過的茶葉途經(jīng)印度尼西亞,繞過非洲大陸南端,一路海運回西歐。

[5]不過，早在cha這個詞根遠涉重洋到達葡萄牙之前，另一條貿(mào)易線路業(yè)已將茶葉輸往西方，這就是橫貫云南省的茶馬古道。沿著這條古道，高高堆在馬背上的茶磚經(jīng)由波斯境內(nèi)運往印度。在此過程中，cha字在波斯語里變成了chay，在印度則隨不同區(qū)域出現(xiàn)不同變體，大部分地區(qū)都按印地語叫作孟加拉語叫作馬拉雅拉姆語則為雖然多數(shù)印度方言都采用詞根cha的某種變體來命名茶葉，但也有一個例外……

Why the English call it ‘tea’

[6] Around a 100 years after the Portuguese first discovered tea, the Dutch started shipping the leaf from China using their own trade routes. The Dutch fi rst encountered tea in 1607 around the modernday Fujian province, where Hokkien44 Hokkien是東南亞華人對閩南話的稱呼，也就是“福建話”。它主要指代閩南話的漳泉口音，即福建、臺灣的閩南話。was the major language. Though the written character for tea was ‘茶’, its pronunciation varied depending on the dialect. In

tea之命名，自有英緣

[6]大約在葡萄牙人發(fā)現(xiàn)茶葉之后一個世紀，荷蘭商船開始沿自己的貿(mào)易航線從中國海運茶葉。1607年，荷蘭人在現(xiàn)代福建省所在地區(qū)初次見識到中國的茶葉，福建當?shù)胤窖灾饕情}南話，而同一個漢字“茶”在不同方言里的發(fā)音Mandarin and Cantonese, for example,it’s pronounced ‘cha’, whereas in Wu Chinese5吳語，中國七大方言之一，又稱江東話、江南話、吳越語。分布于今浙江、江蘇南部、上海、安徽南部、江西東北部、福建西北，使用人口9000多萬。it’s ‘dzo’. Following in the linguistic footsteps of the Hoklo folk of Fujian, the Dutch called the drink ‘thee’.

[7] Along with the tea itself, the root word ‘te’ travelled across the oceans,as the Dutch fought through storms for months at a time to carry China’s medicinal miracle to the West. In Tamil,the word for tea leaves isyheyilai’, while the word for the beverage istheneer’, both of which are derived from the root ‘te’. Tamil,of course, is spoken primarily in the southeastern Indian state of Tamil Nadu,which was one of the stopping points on the old Dutch trade route. The root ‘te’also reached Indonesia—a former Dutch colony—where in Javanese the word is pronounced ‘teh’. The Dutch East India Company’s expansive tea importation into Europe gave us the Frenchthé, the GermanTee, and the Englishtea. In fact, soon after the Dutch introduced the British to the wonders of tea, they were hooked.各不相同，例如，普通話和粵語都發(fā)音為cha，吳語則作dzo。荷蘭人按福建方言將茶音譯為thee。

[7]荷蘭商船每次要與風(fēng)雨搏斗數(shù)月之久，才能將中國這一神奇的藥草運回西方。在此期間，詞根te也隨之一同漂揚過海。在泰米爾語中，茶葉的對應(yīng)詞是yheyilai，沖泡出的茶水叫■ theneer，兩者都是由詞根te派生而來——要知道，泰米爾語的主要使用地區(qū)泰米爾納德邦地處印度東南端，當年正是荷蘭貿(mào)易航線上的一個經(jīng)停點。此外，詞根te還傳到了印度尼西亞（原荷蘭殖民地），所以爪哇語中茶葉一詞的發(fā)音是teh。荷蘭東印度公司將茶葉廣泛引入歐洲各國，因而才有了法語的thé、德語的tee，以及英語的tea。荷蘭商人將茶葉傳入英國，茶的神奇功效很快讓英國人著了迷。

A popular misconception

[8] The popular conception is th at the two major root words ‘te’ and ‘cha’ can be distinguished by whether the beverage was introduced to a certain country

cha、tea之說，流誤待澄

[8]人們普遍認為，根據(jù)茶葉是由陸路還是水路傳入某國，可以區(qū)分te和cha這兩種主要詞根，即大多數(shù)通過水by land or by sea. While most countries where tea was introduced by sea use variations of ‘tea’, those to where it travelled by land use variations of the root word ‘cha’.

[9] However, it is believed that the similarity of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese pronunciations of tea with the Chinese had nothing to do with the Europeans, but is instead because of the overarching6overarching首要的；概莫能外的。linguistic similarities in these languages. The Japanese, who were fi rst introduced to tea between the years 794–1195 by travelling Japanese monks, call tea ‘cha’, using the same character as China. In Korean tea is also pronounced ‘cha’, and in Vietnamese it is called ‘trà’.

[10] So whether you call it ‘tea’ or‘cha’ or something in between, it is clear that, through everything, tea has brought countries and cultures closer together. Whether you drink it from a bag or loose-leafed, with milk or without, in the morning or afternoon, the way you say ‘tea’ is an experience you share with billions of others. ■路輸入茶葉的國家都使用單詞tea的變體，而經(jīng)由陸路傳入的國家則多采用cha的變體。

[9]但需注意，日語、韓語和越南語中“茶”字的發(fā)音與中文相似，背后原因卻與歐洲茶商沒有任何關(guān)系，而僅僅因為這些語言之間存在極大的相似性。來華游歷的日本僧人在794—1195年間將茶葉帶回本國，日語中“茶”字的發(fā)音（cha）和寫法跟漢字相同；韓語中“茶”的發(fā)音也是cha，越南語中的發(fā)音則是trà。

[10]如此看來，無論你稱茶為tea還是cha，或用介乎兩者之間的某種稱呼，事實都很清楚：這種飲品借由其所蘊含的一切因素，使國與國、文化與文化之間的聯(lián)系變得更為緊密；無論你泡的是茶包還是散葉，加牛奶還是不加牛奶，在午前喝還是午后喝，你稱呼茶的方式與世間其他億萬人的方式都有共通之處。 □