'Tea' or 'chai'? Why we misspeak. Fellatone.
Media Type |
audio
Podknife tags |
Advice, 
Writing
Categories Via RSS |
Education, 
Society & Culture
Publication Date |
Sep 10, 2024
Episode Duration |
00:13:51

1012. Most words are different in different languages, but water from steeped leaves has only two main names: tea and chai. We look at why! Also, if you've ever mixed up words, like calling a butterfly a "flutterby," you'll love learning about what these slips of the tongue tell us about how we form sentences.

The "tea" segment was written by Valerie Fridland, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada in Reno and the author of "Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English." You can find her at valeriefridland.com.

The "slips of the tongue" segment was written by Cecile McKee, , a professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona. It originally appeared on The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license.

đź”— Share your familect recording in a WhatsApp chat.

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đź”— Join Grammarpalooza (Get texts from Mignon!): https://joinsubtext.com/grammar or text "hello" to (917) 540-0876.

| HOST: Mignon Fogarty

| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475).

| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.

  • Audio Engineer: Nathan Semes
  • Director of Podcast: Brannan Goetschius
  • Advertising Operations Specialist: Morgan Christianson
  • Marketing and Publicity Assistant: Davina Tomlin
  • Digital Operations Specialist: Holly Hutchings
  • Marketing and Video: Nat Hoopes

| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.

| Grammar Girl Social Media Links: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook.Threads. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon.

References for the "tea" segment:

Ceresa, Marco. 2009. Tea: A very Short History. Daniel Leese, ed. Brill’s Encyclopedia of China.  Leiden: Brill

Jurafsky, Dan. 2017. Tea. In Sybesma, R. P. E., Wolfgang Behr, Yueguo Gu, Zev J. Handel, Cheng-Teh James Huang, and James Myers, eds. 2017. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill.

Tea Definition and Meaning. Merriam-Webster online.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO. 2021. A cup of tea…or chai? Available at https://www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/1639559/

Mair, Victor. 2019. Sinographs for “tea”. Language Log post. Available at https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=41281

Ă–sten Dahl. 2013. Tea. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) WALS Online.

Säily, Tanja, Mäkelä, Eetu and Samuli Kaislaniemi. 2019. Cha before tea: finding earlier mentions in a corpus of early English letters (part 1). Oxford English Dictionary Academic Case Studies.  Available at

 https://www.oed.com/information/using-the-oed/academic-case-studies/the-oed-and-research/cha-before-tea-finding-earlier-mentions-in-a-corpus-of-early-english-letters-part-1/

1012. Most words are different in different languages, but water from steeped leaves has only two main names: tea and chai. We look at why! Also, if you've ever mixed up words, like calling a butterfly a "flutterby," you'll love learning about what these slips of the tongue tell us about how we form sentences.

1012. Most words are different in different languages, but water from steeped leaves has only two main names: tea and chai. We look at why! Also, if you've ever mixed up words, like calling a butterfly a "flutterby," you'll love learning about what these slips of the tongue tell us about how we form sentences.

The "tea" segment was written by Valerie Fridland, a professor of linguistics at the University of Nevada in Reno and the author of "Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English." You can find her at valeriefridland.com.

The "slips of the tongue" segment was written by Cecile McKee, , a professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona. It originally appeared on The Conversation and appears here through a Creative Commons license.

đź”— Share your familect recording in a WhatsApp chat.

🔗 Watch my LinkedIn Learning writing courses.

🔗 Subscribe to the newsletter.

🔗 Take our advertising survey. 

đź”— Get the edited girl.simplecast.com/episodes/firstly/transcript">transcript.

🔗 Get Grammar Girl books. 

đź”— Join Grammarpalooza (Get texts from Mignon!): https://joinsubtext.com/grammar or text "hello" to (917) 540-0876.

| HOST: Mignon Fogarty

| VOICEMAIL: 833-214-GIRL (833-214-4475).

| Grammar Girl is part of the Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network.

  • Audio Engineer: Nathan Semes
  • Director of Podcast: Brannan Goetschius
  • Advertising Operations Specialist: Morgan Christianson
  • Marketing and Publicity Assistant: Davina Tomlin
  • Digital Operations Specialist: Holly Hutchings
  • Marketing and Video: Nat Hoopes

| Theme music by Catherine Rannus.

| Grammar Girl Social Media Links: YouTube. TikTok. Facebook.Threads. Instagram. LinkedIn. Mastodon.

References for the "tea" segment:

Ceresa, Marco. 2009. Tea: A very Short History. Daniel Leese, ed. Brill’s Encyclopedia of China.  Leiden: Brill

Jurafsky, Dan. 2017. Tea. In Sybesma, R. P. E., Wolfgang Behr, Yueguo Gu, Zev J. Handel, Cheng-Teh James Huang, and James Myers, eds. 2017. Encyclopedia of Chinese Language and Linguistics. Leiden: Brill.

Tea Definition and Meaning. Merriam-Webster online.

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO. 2021. A cup of tea…or chai? Available at https://www.fao.org/family-farming/detail/en/c/1639559/

Mair, Victor. 2019. Sinographs for “tea”. Language Log post. Available at https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=41281

Ă–sten Dahl. 2013. Tea. In: Dryer, Matthew S. & Haspelmath, Martin (eds.) WALS Online.

Säily, Tanja, Mäkelä, Eetu and Samuli Kaislaniemi. 2019. Cha before tea: finding earlier mentions in a corpus of early English letters (part 1). Oxford English Dictionary Academic Case Studies.  Available at

 https://www.oed.com/information/using-the-oed/academic-case-studies/the-oed-and-research/cha-before-tea-finding-earlier-mentions-in-a-corpus-of-early-english-letters-part-1/

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