Status Updates From A Brief History of China: D...

Countries that first encountered tea shipped over land tended to derive their word for it from the Mandarin pronunciation: chá - leading to the Persian chai. But for those countries whose first encounter with the dried leaves came by sea, shipped at first by Dutch merchants from Fujian, the pronunciation sounded more like the word in the Hokkien dialect: teh - leading to the Dutch thee, the German tee, and tea.