Re: ChaYe means Tea not Cha

So in ChinGlish is it 'I buy cha' or 'I buy chaye' Or 'I went to the
cha shoppe' or 'I went to the chaye shoppe'.

Using Chinglish would be more confusing.

A Chinese storekeeper will say in mandarin "xienshen, yao mai chaye,
ma?" (mr., would you like to buy some tea (leaves)?).
To which you'll respond "xe, wo yau mai chaye." (yes, I'd like to buy
some tea (leaves).) Of course, this sounds like a bookish response,
as an adult you'd be more likely to say something like "yes, what's
good here?" or dive straight into the particulars. However, if you
said "...yao mai cha." (without using ye), the storekeeper will
understand, too, but if they are also in the business of selling
canned tea beverages, then those will be included in the possibilty.

Then the storekeeper will probably ask you "xienshen, ni xihuan he
seme cha?" (mr., what kind of tea do you like to drink?).
To which you could say "wo xihuan he pu'er cha" (I like drinking pu'er
tea)...again bookish answer. In real, just say "pu'er" and you'll be
understood.



On Apr 10, 7:17 am, "Space Cowboy" <netst...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
MarshalN,

So in ChinGlish is it 'I buy cha' or 'I buy chaye' Or 'I went to the
cha shoppe' or 'I went to the chaye shoppe'.  I'm trying to flush out
the particular usage more than anything else.  If ChaYe is the term to
use for Tea when not drinking it is darn close to what I said.

xiexie,
Jim

PS  Is anyone using the Google PinYin IME?  Yesterday they apologized
for using another Chinese search engine character set and promised to
cease and desist.  It also opened up some security hole for Vista
which was patched.  Their character lookup is simply based on the
character frequency in their Web index.  I'm writing one based on the
500 most commonly used characters in Chinese.  I wished I could get
Google to give me a dump like that without me using some list.

On Apr 10, 3:31 am, "MarshalN" <marsh...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:



On Apr 10, 3:25 am, "Space Cowboy" <netst...@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Lew,

I'll respond to you.  You,et al,say it is a different Ye.  Plug this
string into Google to see the companies that use ChaYe in their name:

茶叶公司

It means Cha(Ye) GongSi or Tea(Leaf) Company.  The Ye second character
means leaf and is 'silent'.  If the use were limited I would agree it
has an alternate meaning like industry or dry leaf as suggested.  One
of my dictionaries says ChaYe means tea as the first translation, and
tea leaves as the second.  Chinese meaning is taken from the usage so
I don't see why ChaYe would be required in a company name versus Cha
or even on a menu.

Jim

You are taking this too literally.  It really is just a case of
different usage in different languages.  You won't translate
somebody's names as "XYZ Tea Leaves Company", you'd give them a more
appropriate name in the language that you're translating to, in this
case English, and call it "XYZ Tea Company".

Convention has it that when used in "XYZ company", the compound Chaye
is more often used than just Cha.  That is not to say, however, that
Chaye, and not Cha, is tea.  Both are tea, and they have different
usages that do not overlap.  You simply cannot call the drink "chaye",
for that is incorrect in Chinese and you will be laughed at if you say
so to any native speaker if you say something like "wo xihuan he
chaye" (I like to drink tea [leaves]).  It's just wrong.  In English
there's no distinction between tea the liquid and tea the solid, but
in Chinese that is expressed through the terms Cha and Chaye.

MarshalN- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


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