Etymology of tea
The etymology of the various words for "tea" reflects the history of transmission of tea drinking culture and trade from China to countries around the world. Nearly all of the words for tea worldwide fall into three broad groups: "te", "cha" and "chai", present in English as "tea", "cha" or "char", and "chai". The earliest of the three to enter English is "cha", which came in the 1590s via the Portuguese, who traded in Macao and picked up the Cantonese pronunciation of the word. The more common "tea" form arrived in the 17th century via the Dutch , who acquired it either indirectly from the Malay "teh", or directly from the "tê" pronunciation in Min Chinese. The third form "chai" (meaning "spiced tea") originated from a northern Chinese pronunciation of "cha", which travelled overland to Central Asia and Persia where it picked up a Persian ending "yi", and entered English via Hindustani in the 20th century. The different regional pronunciations of the word in China are believed to have arisen from the same root, which diverged due to sound changes through the centuries. The written form of the word in Chinese 茶 was created in the mid-Tang  dynasty by modifying the character 荼 (pronounced "tu") that meant "bitter vegetable". "Tu" was used to refer to a variety of plants in ancient China, and acquired the additional meaning of "tea" by the Han dynasty. The Chinese word for tea was ultimately derived from the non-Sinitic languages of the botanical homeland of the tea plant in southwest China (or Burma), possibly from an archaic Austro-Asiatic root word *"la", meaning "leaf". Pronunciation. The Chinese character for tea is 茶, originally written with an extra horizontal stroke as 荼 (pronounced "tu"), and acquired its current form in the Tang  dynasty first used in the eighth-century treatise on tea "The Classic of Tea". The word "tú" appears in ancient Chinese texts such as "Shijing" signifying a kind of "bitter vegetable" () and refers to various plants such as sow thistle, chicory, or smartweed, and also used to refer to tea during the Han dynasty. By the Northern Wei the word "tu" also appeared with a wood radical, meaning a tea tree. The word 茶 first introduced during the Tang dynasty refers exclusively to tea. It is pronounced differently in the different varieties of Chinese, such as "chá" in Mandarin, "zo  and dzo" in Wu Chinese, and "ta" and "te" in Min Chinese. One suggestion is that the pronunciation of "tu" (荼) gave rise to "tê"; but historical phonologists believe that "cha", "te" and "dzo" all arose from the same root with a reconstructed hypothetical pronunciation "dra" ("dr"- represents a single consonant for a retroflex "d"), which changed due to sound shift through the centuries. Other ancient words for tea include "jia" (檟, defined as "bitter "tu"" during the Han dynasty), "she" (蔎), "ming" (茗, meaning "fine, special tender tea") and "chuan" (荈), but "ming" is the only other word for  tea still in common use. Most Chinese languages, such as Mandarin and Cantonese, pronounce it along the lines of "cha", but Min varieties along the Southern coast of China and in Southeast Asia pronounce it like "teh". These two pronunciations have made their separate ways into other languages around the world: A third form, chai, is likely to have come from Persian چای "chay". Both the "châ" and "chây" forms are found in Persian dictionaries. They are thought to have been derived from Northern Chinese pronunciation of "chá", which passed overland to Central Asia and Persia, where it picked up  the Persian ending "-yi" before passing on to Russian, Arabic, Turkish, etc. The "chai" pronunciation first entered English either via Russian or Arabic in the early 20th century, and then as a word for "spiced tea" via Hindi-Urdu which acquired the word under the influence of the Mughals. English has all three forms: "cha" or "char" (both pronounced ), attested from the late 16th century; "tea", from the 17th; and "chai", from the 20th. Languages in more intense contact with Chinese, Sinospheric languages like Korean, and Japanese, may have borrowed their words for tea at an earlier time and from  a different variety of Chinese, in the so-called Sino-Xenic pronunciations. Although normally pronounced as "cha" (commonly with an honorific prefix "o-" as "ocha"), Japanese also retains the early but now uncommon pronunciations of "ta" and "da", similarly Korean also has "ta" in addition to "cha", and Vietnamese "trà" in addition to "chè". The different pronunciations for tea in Japanese arose from the different times the pronunciations were borrowed into the language: "Ta" comes from the Tang dynasty court at Chang'an: that is, from Middle Chinese; "da" however comes from the earlier Southern Dynasties court at Nanjing, a place  where the consonant was still voiced, as it is today in neighbouring Shanghainese "zo". Zhuang has southern "cha"-type pronunciations. The few exceptions of words for tea that do not fall into the three broad groups of "te", "cha" and "chai" are the minor languages from the botanical homeland of the tea plant. Examples are "la" (meaning tea purchased elsewhere) and "miiem" (wild tea gathered in the hills) from the Wa people of northeast Burma and southwest Yunnan, "letpet" in Burmese and "meng" in Lamet meaning "fermented tea leaves", as well as "miang" in Thai ("fermented tea"). These languages belong to  the Austro-Asiatic, Tibeto-Burman and Tai families of languages now found in South East Asia and southwest of China. Scholars have suggested that the Austro-Asiatic languages may be the ultimate source of the word tea, including the various Chinese words for tea such as "tu", "cha" and "ming". "Cha" for example may have been derived from an archaic Austro-Asiatic root word *"la" (Proto-Austroasiatic: *slaʔ, cognate with Proto-Vietic *s-laːʔ), meaning "leaf", used by an ancient people from southwest China, while "ming" may be from the Mon–Khmer "meng" (fermented tea leaves). The Sinitic, Tibeto-Burman  and Tai speakers who came into contact with the Austro-Asiatic speakers then borrowed their words for tea. Etymological observations. The different words for tea fall into two main groups: ""te"-derived" (Min) and ""cha"-derived" (Cantonese and Mandarin). Most notably through the Silk Road; global regions with a history of land trade with central regions of Imperial China (such as North Asia, Central Asia, the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East) pronounce it along the lines of "'cha'", whilst most global maritime regions with a history of sea trade with certain southeast regions of Imperial China (such as Europe), pronounce it  like "'teh"'. The words that various languages use for "tea" reveal where those nations first acquired their tea and tea culture: At times, a "te" form will follow a "cha" form, or "vice versa", giving rise to both in one language, at times one an imported variant of the other: