China’s most successful export
Hint: it’s lexical. On the map, red and blue indicate the lexical item was exported from China’s north or south respectively, while gray indicates the lexical product does not come from China. If you give up or get lazy, you can get the answer from the very cool World Atlas of Language Structures Online, which I seem to rediscover from time to time and always intend to explore further. This map is just one niblet of all the linguistic goodies they offer.
I knew it
Cool site, thanks for the tip!
Korean language seems to have both Sinitic and Minnan origin.
My parents’ generation used to go to 다방(dabang; 茶房) to have a cup of 차(cha; 茶) while my generation go to 카페(kape; café). We are requested to respect traditional Korean 다도(dado; 茶道; tea ceremony), specially at the formal occasion – like where provides 다과(dagwa; 茶菓; light refreshments). People like to drink 녹차(nokcha; 綠茶), 홍차(hongcha; 紅茶), 전통차(jeontongcha; 傳統茶), etc.
da in IPA is /tɑ/;
cha in IPA is /tʃɑ/.
What do you mean, Korean has both Sinitic and Minnan origin?
Minnan is a Sinitic language as well, and despite the huge amount of loanwords from Chinese into Korean no serious scholars thinks that Korean would have a Sinitic origin…
Chrix: the WALS itself cites the sources as “Sinitic cha” and Min Nan Chinese te”. So Youngjun Kwon is being consistent. I suppose WALS means “Sinitic, not including Min Nan in this particular case”.
Youngjun Kwon: Interesting difference. Would the Hanja appear in both cases, or was it all Hangul by then?
This whole thing reminds me of people going into Starbucks in America asking for a Chai Tea, not knowing the drink is actually a Masala Chai Latte.
@Chrix: Sorry, my mistake. Kellen points out what I meant. I should’ve written “Korean word tea would have both ‘Sinitic cha’ and ‘Minnan Chinese te’ origin.”
@Kellen: Hangeul was invented in 15c, the tea trade between Korea and China trace back to 9c at least. So Koreans focus on how to read 茶. If it was read da or the old pronunciation form of da, it is marked as da, commonly without Hanja, and the same way to cha.
I think there are two possible causes: it can be a result of direct trade between ancient Korea and southern China through sea transportation, or it can merely be a result of phonological transition. I think the former is a strong probability, because the latter cannot explain why only a part of 茶 changed from cha to da or da to cha.
Follows are readings of 茶 in Korean.
da
喫茶(끽다; “to drink tea”), 茶臼(다구; “millstone to grind tea”), 茶具(다구; “tea set”), 茶房(다방; “tea house”, “café”), 茶匙(다시, “tea spoon”), 茶靄(다애; “tea mist??”), 臘茶(납다; “sprout tea”), 煎茶(전다; “to boil tea”), 茶菓(다과; ”refreshment”), 茶器(다기; ”tea set”), 茶道(다도; “tea ceremony”), 茶禮(다례; “tea etiquette”).
cha
喫茶(끽차; “to drink tea”), 抹茶(말차; “powder tea”), 茶盞(찻잔; “teacup”), 綠茶(녹차; “green tea”), 葉茶(엽차; “coarse tea”), 紅茶(홍차; “black tea”).
It is seemed that 茶 is read da when it functions as a modifier.
@Youngjun,
It’s almost certainly not phonological change. Middle Korean /t-/ (ㄷ) only palatalizes to Modern Korean /tʃ-/ (ㅈ) before high front vowels. And in any case it doesn’t palatalize to /tʃʰ-/ (ㅊ). A change in the other direction is even less likely. So I think your hypothesis of two sources is likely correct: a pronunciation /ta/ related to Southern Min, associated with the importation of ‘tea’, and the regular Sino-Korean reading /tʃʰa/ that comes from the northern Late Middle Chinese pronunciation of ‘tea’.
That’s a really neat doublet in Korean.
I’m curious about the present distribution within China itself — surely there should be at least one Minnan data point inside the country?
@Kellen: thanks for pointing that out. So it seems that the WALS is using some weird naming scheme here….
@JDMARTINSEN: They have Cantonese. Apparently for this they have only two data points from Sinitic languages.