AND The most drunk drink in the worldwith about 2 billion people who consume at least one cup a day. We are talking about that drink obtained from the infusion of the leaves of the plant Camellia (or Thea) Sinensiswhich in Italy is written in at least four different ways, of which three are Definitely wrong: there are those who write tea, tea, théor teabut the only correct version is the one with the serious accent “tea“, reported in Italian dictionaries.
Let’s start by saying that writing the name of this drink without emphasis would be a double mistake: “you” in fact indicates the Singular tonic pronoun Depending on complement (e.g. “I was telling you a little while ago”).
The “Thé” version, on the other hand, is not incorrect, but proper to French and not of Italian. On the contrary, the “tea” and “the” variants are both errors – someone would say “horrors” – spell In our language, because neither of the two follows the rules of the Italian language: the “H” in fact has no phonetic value (it does not pronounce) and is used only for a small circle of words (see the verb to have) to distinguish them from the homotone words, and therefore that have the same pronunciation. Furthermore – and this is perhaps the most important point – the “Th” digram does not belong to our language, but derives from the influence of English on Italian, and it is precisely for this reason that it makes no sense of orthographic.
In any case, however strange it may seem, the word tea has two letters not by chance: in fact, the word derives from the Chinese “te” (茶), pronounced “tea“ in the Hokkien dialect (mainly spoken in the Fujian province, in south-east of China). His name of origin was also adopted by European countries, which thanks to the imports of the leaves by the Dutch maritime traders were able to enjoy the drink of the distant East starting from 1610 (The first precious load arrived in the Netherlands, then spread to France and Germany and the rest of the continent). Thus, with some linguistic changes, the famous infusion has become “tea“For the British,”thé“For the French,”tea“For the Spaniards and”tea“For us Italians.
In Beijing and in the northern areas, however, the same character (茶) was pronounced “chá“. During the Tang dynasty (618 – 907 AD), chá was the official term to indicate tea, and this name was adopted by the European merchants present in that area of China, which were Portuguese (for them tea is”chá“), Russi (” чай “, that is chai) and Persians (چای, chai). Its name was widespread also thanks to “Chájīng“(茶经, The classic of tea), Of Lu yuthe first book dedicated entirely to tea in which its cultivation, preparation and property was described. It is also thanks to this work if the tea has become increasingly popular in China, spreading widely and also reaching those who led it to us.
