German Word-of-the-Day for Owlet: Day 6

[muckefuck]

der Tee /te:/ "tea"

Most likely, this was already a part of your vocabulary, as well as names for various types of teas, such as Schwarztee "black tea", Grüntee "green tea", and Kräutertee "herbal tea; tisane". A few grammatical points, though: The first two have variants with independent forms of the adjectives, i.e. schwarzer Tee and grüner Tee. The compounds are probably more common, but I wouldn't swear to it. Also, notice that the combining forms for ingredients are normally plural, e.g. Kräutertee (cf. das Kraut "herb; (regional) cabbage"), Früchtetee (die Frucht "fruit"), Minzentee (die Minze "mint", but cf. Pfefferminztee "peppermint tea"), Zitronentee (die Zitrone "lemon").

What do you stir your tea with? Mit einem Teelöffel, naturally, once you've poured it into eine Teetasse. Die Teekanne holds the rest until you're ready for your nächste Tasse Tee.

Bonus questions:

1. What are the genders of Löffel, Tasse, and Kanne? Give the nominative form of the article for each.
2. If the word for "sweet" is süß, how would you say "sweet tea"?
3. If the word for "ice" is das Eis, how would you say "ice tee"?

Comments

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

bunj and e. send Früchtetee to me on a regular basis.

1. Why would German have stolen tasse from the French? Is there an older, Germanic word? At least it's feminine in both languages. So I notice in my dictionary that it's der Löffel, die Tasse, and die Kanne: is the final -e a good indicator of femininity?

2. Here's a joke answer: süßliche Tee.

3. And I know it's Eiswein, so I'm going to go with Eistee, tho I submit that, in English, it should be iced tea.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

1. Presumably because they stole the idea of drinking coffee and tea from the French. The native alternative would be der Becher /bɛçər/. A search for Teebecher brings up pictures of what I would call "teacups", but I usually think of a Becher as a mug or a Pappbecher "paper cup".

And, yes, final -e is frequently a sign of feminine gender. Other examples from the same post are die Zitrone and die Pfefferminze. But note die Frucht and other very frequent exceptions like die Mutter and die Nacht. Then, on the other hand, there are the so-called "weak nouns" like der Name, der Junge, or der Gedanke and substantivised adjectives like der Beamte or das Wichtigste.

2. *BZZZT* Tee is masculine!

3. Well, there is eisgekühlter Tee, but that sounds to my ears like "ice-cold tea" rather than "iced tea".

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

2. süßlich Tee?

3. I imagine that trying to find iced tea in Germany would be difficult. I guess I'd have to make do with Eiswein. *woe*

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

2. Sounds like "sweetly tea". Hint: How do you describe Tee as being "black" or "green"?

3. No, Eistee is easy to find. My point is just: If the Germans have no hangups about using a noun-noun compound, why should we? Or do you think that "ice tea" should be tea made from leaves harvested after being flash-frozen in a frost for a richer, more concentrated flavour?

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

2. Süßtee?

3. I think we've had this discussion before. Did I have an intelligent riposte then? Because I don't today.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough Süßtee is a German word, albeit one with a different meaning. Apparently, it's a popular name for certain oriental plants such as Stevia from which non-sucrose sweeteners can be extracted.

The word I was looking for, however, was süßer Tee. Since Tee is masculine, the attributive adjective needs a der-type ending.

[snowy-owlet.livejournal.com]

Okay: one can find Eistee in Germany, but what about süßer Tee? (That's even hard to find here, because Texas is Not the Normal South)

Also, stevia is gross.

[markusn.livejournal.com]

You can find iced tea in Germany, but it won't be what you expect, obviously being dixie. It's just black tea, usually flavored with lemon, and very sweet. Sold in tetrapacks. Not a big cultural thing as in the south of the US of A.

[cpratt.livejournal.com]

Ice Tea is a common enough thing to see on packaging, at least in Switzerland.

More interesting to me is of course how the heck we wound up with Tee/Tea, when things that sound like cha [eg chai] are more common around the world...

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Broadly speaking, it depends whether you first got your tea overland or by sea. Tê is the Minnan (a.k.a. Amoy dialect, Taiwanese, etc.) pronunciation, which, given the prominent role of Minnan merchants in the development of Southeast Asia, is probably the source for Malay teh. This name was then carried back to Europe by the Dutch and the Portuguese and spread thence into other Western European languages (e.g. Spanish té, Danish te, etc.).

Cha2 is the Mandarin prounuciation and a likely source for Russian Чай, Hindi chai, and Korean 차 /cha/. (Note, though, that Korean also has the alternative form 다 /ta/ in such words as 다방 /tapang/ "tea house".) At some point, the Portuguese reborrowed this term (either from Mandarin or, more likely, Cantonese cha4), because their modern word is chá.

As far as which is more common, it would be interesting to actually do the numbers. Cha has a big leg-up because of all the Mandarin speakers, but you'd have to balance against that all the English, French, and Spanish speakers plus speakers of all the languages they've lent the term to.

[pne.livejournal.com]

The compounds are probably more common, but I wouldn't swear to it.

"Grüntee" seems less common to me than "grüner Tee".

"Schwarztee" and "schwarzer Tee" are both used, perhaps about equally often.