| This etymology is missing or incomplete. Please add to it, or discuss it at the Etymology scriptorium. Particularly: “Considered native Hmongic by Ratliff, and thus according to Ratliff one of a very few words among languages worldwide where the word for "tea" isn't borrowed from *or* related to Old Chinese 茶 (OC *rlaː), though no reconstructed proto-form is given.[1] That said, this looks a *lot* like 茶葉／茶叶 (cháyè, “tea leaves”); could this be a recent borrowing? Native Hmong speakers seem to analyze this as a compound of tshuaj (“medicine”) + a "hapax" syllable yej taken to mean "tea". This could be folk etymology, and the putative Chinese borrowing (probably from a southern Mandarin sub-dialect) shaped by said folk etymology to match existing words in Hmong. Heimbach seems to agree that "tshuaj" is from 茶, though he mentions his "tea" as "tshuaj swm" and not "tshuaj yej".[2] Note also an apparent dialectal synonym, nplooj ces.” |
tshuaj yej