I bet you didnt know that

KevRossi

In most languages asking for a cup of tea is covered by two words, or their derivatives; essentially tea or chai. Tea is used in countries where tea originally came by sea and chai in countries where it came overland.

Reasons behind this are of the different pronunciation of the word tea in Chinese dialects. The written character for tea is the same: 茶

But the areas where tea was traded with Europe by sea like Fujian, it is pronounced similar to "Tea" and the Dutch who had an initial monopoly on trading in the is area in the 17th Century took this word with them. It is pronounced Chai in Mandarin and thus areas along the Silk Road used this word for tea. It is why today tea is known as Chay/Chai in Turkey, Russia and parts of Eastern Europe.

The only exception in Europe is Portugal, as they took their tea from traders in Macau, where the tea traders where of Mandarin origin. Thus in Portugal it is known as Cha. The Portuguese also took this name with them to India via their colonies and it's why it is known as Chai in India.

The other exceptions worldwide are areas which have originally grown tea and have their own words for it such as in Burma where it is know as Lakphak.

So there ye go. If ye want a nice cup of hot tay anywhere on the planet you should be able to get by with Tea or Chai. Just don't say Barry's or Lyons as you'll just start a row,

And here's a map of trade and consequently pronunciation routes for context.

mzungu

The tongue of the blue whale is roughly equal in weight to an adult female elephant.

Overall, the blue whale often weighs more than 130 tonnes, whilst the largest adult male African elephants would weigh around 7 tonnes at an absolute maximum (usually they would weigh between 3-6 tonnes depending on age). This means the blue whale weighs the equivalent of eighteen and a half fully grown male African elephants.

Not surprisingly, the blue whale is the largest animal known to have lived.

Capt'n Midnight

In 1856 Sir Andrew Waugh calculated the height of Mt. Everest to be exactly 29,000ft.

However, he published the calculation of 29,002ft. due to the fear that the former would seem like nothing more than a rounded estimate.

This makes him the first person to put two feet on top of Mt. Everest.

Capt'n Midnight

Mud volcano erupts in Azerbaijan.

Just like Elbonia in Dilbert.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

In 1856 Sir Andrew Waugh calculated the height of Mt. Everest to be exactly 29,000ft.

However, he published the calculation of 29,002ft. due to the fear that the former would seem like nothing more than a rounded estimate.

This makes him the first person to put two feet on top of Mt. Everest.

An Indian survey subsequently set the height at 29029ft in the 50s. A Chinese survey in 2005 put it at 29017ft. However, the height is based on the highest point of rock and not the snow and ice at the summit. The Chinese measured the snow & ice to be 12ft: giving the 29029ft figure.

New Home

mzungu wrote: »

Not surprisingly, the blue whale is the largest animal known to have lived.

I had no idea. I honestly though that some of the dinosaurs (or some prehistoric animal) would have been bigger. Cool!

Ineedaname

mzungu wrote: »

The tongue of the blue whale is roughly equal in weight to an adult female elephant.

Overall, the blue whale often weighs more than 130 tonnes, whilst the largest adult male African elephants would weigh around 7 tonnes at an absolute maximum (usually they would weigh between 3-6 tonnes depending on age). This means the blue whale weighs the equivalent of eighteen and a half fully grown male African elephants.

Not surprisingly, the blue whale is the largest animal known to have lived.

During the early days of whaling, Blue Whales were largely avoided due to their size, speed and power. This changed with the invention of a harpoon specially designed to target them.

By the time hunting them was made illegal in 1966 over 330,000 had been killed in the Antarctic. Only around 360 survived. About 0.15% of the original population.

Duckworth_Luas

Brush Shiels played for Bohemian FC in the 1960s.


Chris O'Dowd played in goals for Roscommon GAA.


Richard Harris played rugby for Munster.

KevRossi

Duckworth_Luas wrote: »

Brush Shiels played for Bohemian FC in the 1960s.


Chris O'Dowd played in goals for Roscommon GAA.


Richard Harris played rugby for Munster.

Neil Prendeville played with himself.

SuperS54

KevRossi wrote: »

It is pronounced Chai in Mandarin and thus areas along the Silk Road used this word for tea.

It's pronounced "Chá" in Mandarin (using standard Hanyu Pinyin), not sure where "Chai" is coming from. 柴 or Chai is a particular type of Indian tea made with milk, sugar and cardamom.

sbsquarepants

SuperS54 wrote: »

It's pronounced "Chá" in Mandarin (using standard Hanyu Pinyin), not sure where "Chai" is coming from. 柴 or Chai is a particular type of Indian tea made milk, sugar and cardamom.

Don't know if it's just a Dublin thing, or an old timer thing, or possibly a specific Dublin old timer thing but I often hear people refer to a cup of tea as a "cup of cha" I even do it myself on occasion - I wonder is that where it came from or is it just coincidental?

SuperS54

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Don't know if it's just a Dublin thing, or an old timer thing, or possibly a specific Dublin old timer thing but I often hear people refer to a cup of tea as a "cup of cha" I even do it myself on occasion - I wonder is that where it came from or is it just coincidental?

I wondered that myself when I first learned Chá in Mandarin, it was certainly one of the easier characters to remember!

Wikipedia says the following https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea ;

In Ireland, or at least in Dublin, the term cha is sometimes used for "tea," as is pre-vowel-shift pronunciation "tay" (from which the Irish Gaelic word tae is derived[citation needed]). Char was a common slang term for tea throughout British Empire and Commonwealth military forces in the 19th and 20th centuries, crossing over into civilian usage.
The British slang word "char" for "tea" arose from its Cantonese Chinese pronunciation "cha" with its spelling affected by the fact that ar is a more common way of representing the phoneme /ɑː/ in British English.

I'm not entirely convinced though, particularly in relation to Char coming from Cantonese. In northern China (with the so-called standard accent) where the "er" inflection at the end of words is very prominent, Chá tends to be pronounced as Chá-er, to me it sounds far more like the British "char" than the Cantonese version.

keane2097

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Don't know if it's just a Dublin thing, or an old timer thing, or possibly a specific Dublin old timer thing but I often hear people refer to a cup of tea as a "cup of cha" I even do it myself on occasion - I wonder is that where it came from or is it just coincidental?

This was a thing in Tralee when I was growing up in the 80s as well.

KevRossi

I asked my grand uncle why he always called it Cha. He said it was because the man who owned Lyons teas first name was Charlie. I believed that until I was about 14 when a lad in school who had Chinese parents told me the real story.

Crazy what crap our elders got away with telling us in the 1980's before the internet.

sbsquarepants

Say what you want about the internet - but it has only made the ancient art of the bullshítter all the more difficult:mad:

Tell me how

sbsquarepants wrote: »

Say what you want about the internet - but it has only made the ancient art of the bullshítter all the more difficult:mad:

You think?

I think it's much easier for them as they have unlimited targets and can disappear and move on once sussed. I mean, re-reging is frowned upon but......

Capt'n Midnight

New Home wrote: »

I had no idea. I honestly though that some of the dinosaurs (or some prehistoric animal) would have been bigger. Cool!

It's down to the square cube law. Eventually you get to a point where legs are too thick to use.

Blue whales have been measured up to 173 tonnes so it's quite likely that some grew to 200 tonnes or more. And water supports most of the weight.

A 200 tonne dinosaur means that when one foot was raised off the ground the other leg would have to support 100 tonnes.

If you scaled up a 5 tonne Elephant to Blue Whale weight it would need legs proportionately twice as thick (6.5/3.5) and there isn't a lot of room for them.

It would need feet with 40 times the surface area.

New Home

What about "sea dinosaurs" (yes, that is indeed a technical term I learnteds in collage)?

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

New Home wrote: »

What about "sea dinosaurs" (yes, that is indeed a technical term I learnteds in collage)?

There were no truly aquatic or marine dinosaurs but there where marine reptiles. However, even the largest, like Shonisaurus, came nowhere near the size of blue whales. Which in itself is surprising.

New Home

Thank you.

mzungu

Tigers have striped skin and not just striped fur and no two tigers have the same stripes. This is how individual tigers can be identified.

Ipso

Anders Shy Aircraft wrote: »

There were no truly aquatic or marine dinosaurs but there where marine reptiles. However, even the largest, like Shonisaurus, came nowhere near the size of blue whales. Which in itself is surprising.

So Jurassic World lied when it showed a Great White Shark being fed to a huge sea dinosaur!

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Ipso wrote: »

So Jurassic World lied when it showed a Great White Shark being fed to a huge sea dinosaur!

I'm not aware of the scene but could it have been a marine retile.

Grayson

Ipso wrote: »

So Jurassic World lied when it showed a Great White Shark being fed to a huge sea dinosaur!

No. There were truely massive marine reptiles. It may even be that there were ones bigger than blue whales.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/04/prehistoric-sea-monster-largest-size-blue-whale-fossils-science/

New Home

Grayson wrote: »

No. There were truely massive marine reptiles. It may even be that there were ones bigger than blue whales.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/04/prehistoric-sea-monster-largest-size-blue-whale-fossils-science/

Cool!

Capt'n Midnight

Grayson wrote: »

No. There were truely massive marine reptiles. It may even be that there were ones bigger than blue whales.

One thing that made Blue Whales and their ilk very large is that they skip several layers of the food chain, so less wasted energy.

Many carnivorous dinos did the exact opposite. Due to the large differences in size between a hatchling and an adult they could exploit more of the ecosystem feeding on everything from insects to sauropods over their life cycle.

Capt'n Midnight

mzungu wrote: »

Tigers have striped skin and not just striped fur and no two tigers have the same stripes.

Polar bears have black skin.

ytpe2r5bxkn0c1

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Polar bears have black skin.

And their fur hairs are actually transparent but appear white due to a trick of light called luminescence.

New Home

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Polar bears have black skin.

Zebras do, too (unless I was lied to).

sbsquarepants

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

One thing that made Blue Whales and their ilk very large is that they skip several layers of the food chain, so less wasted energy.

.

My understanding is that it's down to the ability to store nutrients. The "big" whales started to get really big only relatively lately circa 4 - 5 million years ago, after maybe 30 or 40 million years of their size being stable at big, but not huge like today's monsters.
The theory is that as the earths climate changed around this time, glaciers melted. This washed a bounty of nutrients into the oceans, but the cold water also disrupted currents leading to packed coastal buffets separated by open oceans devoid of much food to speak of. To cross the open ocean, you needed to be able to fill up on one side and then live off that on the journey to your next feast on the far side - this evolutionary pressure drove a fairly sudden growth spurt leaving us with the giants we have today.