"Tea" from Dory to Lilly

So, something neato happened today! It worked together with a discussion Lilly and I had on her post "hot."  But before we get to that, we have to rewind to me doing my linguistics homework this morning.


We're talking about how languages evolve in class right now, and today we learned about one way to trace sound changes.  See, words usually aren't really spelled like they're pronounced, and obviously recordings came about only recently, so how do we tell how sounds change?  One way is to look at literature, especially verse and poetry, because that reflects what sounds rhyme at the time it was written.  For example, Mother Goose rhymes were written in the 1500s and 1600s, early in the era of Modern English.  Check it:


Hickory dickory dock
The mouse ran up the clock
The clock struck one,
The mouse ran down,
Hickory dickory dock.


When you were little, did you ever wonder why that one/down rhyme doesn't rhyme at all? ("...maybe it was just me," says my professor.  "I mean, I grew up to be a linguist.")  WELL.  It used to rhyme.  That's one of the clues that historical linguists look at--that obviously used to rhyme, so what sound change does it reflect, and how can it be explained?


Our "one" is now pronounced "wun"[wən], but used to be [on]. Same with "down."  It's [down] now, but it used to be [don]...they used to rhyme.


So on the comments of Lilly's post "hot," we got into a discussion of the eytmology of the Modern English word "tea."  See, it's a borrowed word, because tea itself was imported from the Far East back in the day.  Here's the complicated etymology. I'll bold the important bits.

French thé, Spanish te, Italian tè, Dutch and German thee, Danish, Swedish te, modern Latin thea; < (perhaps through Malay te, teh) Chinese, Amoy dialect te, in Fuchau tiä = Mandarin ch'a (in ancient Chinese probably kia); whence Portuguese cha, obsolete Spanish cha, obsolete Italian cià, Russian čaj, Persian, Urdu chā (10th cent.), Arabic shāy, Turkishchāy. The Portuguese brought the form cha (which is Cantonese as well as Mandarin) from Macao. This form also passed overland into Russia. The form te (thé) was brought into Europe by the Dutch, probably from the Malay at Bantam (if not from Formosa, where the Fuhkien or Amoy form was used). The original English pronunciation /teː/ , sometimes indicated by spelling tay, is found in rhymes down to 1762, and remains in many dialects; but the current /tiː/ is found already in the 17th cent., shown in rhymes and by the spelling tee.

So, not a ton of room for linguistic hypothesis here, cuz they've got it pretty well covered.

BUT GUESS WHAT?  I, all by myself, found an example of the older pronunciation, "tay" [te].  I was doing the aforementioned Linguistics homework of finding evidence in older literature in English of sound changes.  So I was doing a bit of light reading, Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock, written in 1713. AND LOOK.

Soft yielding minds to water glide away,

And sip the Nymphs, their elemental tea.

The graver prude sinks downward to a Gnome,

In search of mischief still on earth to roam.

The light coquettes in Sylphs aloft repair,

And sport in flutter in the fields of air.

--Canto 1, lines 61-66

Oh hey, in that second line, "tea" would have to be pronounced [te] to rhyme!  And as you can see here, and I'll attest to for the rest of the poem, Pope keeps a very strict rhyme scheme, so this isn't just a slant rhyme or bad poetry.  He only seems to slip up in a few places, and they're instances like this, where they rhymed perfectly (for his dialect).

The old pronunciation [te], which ultimately comes from the Far East, is still reflected in some cognates in other languages.  If you go back and look at the etymology, the French "thé," the Spanish "te", and the Italian "tè", all still have this pronunciation.  Cool, eh?


Some more rhymes in The Rape of the Lock that reflect old pronunciations:

What though no credit doubting wits may give?

The fair and innocent shall still believe.

--Canto 1, lines 38-39

Not with more glories, in th' ethereal plain,

the sun first rises o'er the purpled main,

Than issuing forth, the rival of his beams

Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames.

--Canto 2, lines 1-4

fyi, The Thames is the river running through London, and it's pronounced "Temz" [tɛmz].

neat, huh? :)

I'm going to go make some [te] now. Cheers!

p.s.: I brought "The Beast," my British Literature anthology, out of its comfortable retirement as a bookend for this hypothesis.  Be grateful, and impressed.

Love, Dory