Tea versus cha- an early influence of globalization

[Speakeasy]

This thread caused me to recall the uniquely British expression “to char up” which means to boil water and prepare a pot of tea. My father, who was raised in the United Kingdom, would occasionally say to my mother: “Let’s char up 'n hav’a cuppa!” I have been unable to find any references to “char up” on the Internet. However, I do recall reading about it in a British “Boys’ Magazine” when I was about twelve years old. Every issue included an article on the etymology of a word (I still remember the article on “berserk”) Here is the story as I remember it:

The expression “char up” was widely used by British Commonwealth military forces in Western Europe during the Second World War. It was widely misunderstood to be a black humour reference to the rapid burning of Sherman tanks which had a tendency to explode into flames when struck by a projectile. It was believed to be derived from the French word "char" which was commonly used to mean "tank." My father, who served in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, recalled this interpretation, but gave it little credence as he had learned “char up” as a child in England.

The expression “char up” was also misunderstood to have developed during the Great War and, somewhat surprisingly, it was accredited to the black humour reference to British Mark I tank’s tendency to “flame up” when struck by a projectile. The article in the Boys’ Magazine discounted this as unlikely because (a) tanks were not widely used during the Great War and, in any case, the Mark I did not have such a purported tendency to burn rapidly, (b) there exists much evidence that the expression “char up” was popularized during the 19th century, and (c) the derivation of the expression from the French "char", meaning "tank", was highly questionable.

I know, you’re all waiting breathlessly for the punch line ...

The expression “to char up” was, indeed, a colloquialism which meant to boil water and prepare a pot of tea. It was developed at some time during the 19th century, perhaps earlier, most likely by British soldiers serving in the distant posts of the British Empire of India and Southeast Asia. It is believed to be derived directly from the word “cha” which means tea and the addition of the letter “r” is quite typical of some native English speakers when pronouncing a word that ends in the letter “a” most particularly in cases where the next word in the utterance begins with a vowel. That is, saying “cha up” would force a glottal stop that not all native English speakers are comfortable with; hence "char up." The “up” in the expression is believed to be a reference to something like “flame up” in reference to the camp stove that was likely used to boil the water.

I think I’ll go hav’a cuppa!

[Stelle]

Interesting! Thanks for posting!

For the languages that I speak/study...

tea: English (tea), French (thé), Spanish (té), Italian (tè)
cha: Tagalog (tsaa)

[Soffía]

In Icelandic it's simply: te

[tarvos]

Dutch: Thee

[Cainntear]

In Irish, it's "tae", which is roughly pronounced like "tay". I always thought the word might have come from English, but given that so many other languages share the word, it may have a different source, e.g. French or Dutch.

In Scottish Gaelic, it's "tì", which certainly comes from English.

That's a very recent thing, though, and there are still lots of people who use the same word as Irish. The spelling's a bit screwy, being "té" with nothing to indicate the broad T, and it's "teatha" (teh-ha) in the genitive.

[Axon]

The article doesn't mention that Min Nan is spoken well beyond Fujian - it's spoken by a great deal of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. There's a Singapore dish called Bak Kut Teh, which has given its name to a chain of restaurants in Singapore and Indonesia. It's extremely tasty and the Chinese characters are 肉骨茶.

[stelingo]

The Greek word is τσάι, pronounced tsai (rhymes with sigh), Turkish is çay. Polish seems to go against the international trend: herbata.

[Saim]

Polish seems to go against the international trend: herbata.

Which is funny because a kettle is called a czajnik, as in Russian (чайник). Czaj (from Russian чай) also exists in prison slang to refer to a kind of very strong black tea.

EDIT: Apparently in Silesian it's tyj [tɨj], and since Silesian at some point developed ɛ -> ɨ in many words (compare Silesian tyn, tyż to Polish ten, też), this is likely an old Germanic borrowing (cf. Standard German Tee [tʰeː]). Mazurian has kept closer to the German with tej. Kashubian, on the other hand, has arbata like in Polish.

[alexkelbo]

In my area, many people use "Tee" for tea in general, and "Chai" for tea that is usually consumed with milk. This started about 10-15 years ago.

[Serpent]

In American English chai is also short for masala chai, leading to phrases like chai tea