2019-02-01_Popular_Science

FLOWED

koffie

or te?

24 SPRING 2019 • POPSCI.COM by Arika Okrent / illustration by Joel Holland

COFFEE OR TEA? NO MATTER WHERE YOU ARE, YOU’LL RECOGNIZE THE

words for each. That’s because humans have transported them,

along with the potables they represent, for centuries. Ottoman

Empire merchants brought coff ee from Yemen to Turkey and

on to Europe. Tea hitched a ride from China via the Middle East

and along Dutch and Portuguese trade routes to the rest of the

world. This is how, with each trip, locals adapted the verbiage.

E+

/G

ET

TY

IM

AG

ES

*This is a reconstruction of what linguists think the ancestral root for tea was, rather than a term in a known language.