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"Tea" in English
I found these idioms in a dictionary.
A storm in a teacup For all the tea in China Not my cup of tea Are they still used in everyday life in UK? What about US? Do you know some more idioms concerning tea? I like tea.
We don't usually say "a storm in a teacup" in the US, but instead "a tempest in a teapot". The other two are commonly used.
Another one is "he/she/it is about as useful as a chocolate teapot"
Yes, I'd say that these are still in regular use in everyday life in the US. Looking at the above, however, I prefer the American version.
Well in Britain, we have one which isn't really associated with tea, but kettles.
"That's a different kettle of fish."
We have the same "different kettle of fish" in the US as well.:)
We don't get a lot of credit as a tea-drinking nation from our cousins overseas, but we do our share to keep the industry afloat: From the FDA article Tea: A Story of Serendipity: "Tea tastes vary, and one aficionado who squirts lemon in his cup may cringe at the sight of another pouring milk or honey. But no matter how the tea may be doctored, in the United States the odds are overwhelming that it starts out black. Nearly 95 percent of all tea consumed here is black, according to the New York City-based Tea Council of the U.S.A.; 4 percent is green, 1 percent oolong, and 1 percent flavored. That wasn't always the case, and our proclivity for drinking black tea over green or oolong may have been influenced by events in history. Sixty years ago and more, the amount of black and green tea Americans drank was split fairly evenly--each accounting for about 40 percent of the market--with oolong constituting the rest. During World War II, however, the major sources of green tea--China and Japan--were cut off from the United States, leaving us with tea almost exclusively from British-controlled India, which produces black tea. Americans came out of the war drinking nearly 99 percent black tea. With the Korean War in the 1950s, uncertainties about tea supplies resurfaced, and the United States began to look for other suppliers. "Argentina filled the bill," Dick says, "because tea could grow very fast there. Although the country didn't produce an outstanding tea, it produced a good average tea." Today, most of our tea comes from Argentina, China (which got back into the U.S. market in 1978), and Java. Thirty years ago most of it came from India and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). Argentine black tea is the kind most used for iced tea, and that's another reason black tea dominates the U.S. market. Some Like It Cold America is unique in its tea consumption habits, the Tea Council says, in that approximately 40 billion of the 50 billion cups consumed here each year are over ice. Iced tea debuted in 1904 at the Louisiana State Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Mo. According to the Tea Council, "The temperature was soaring and the staff in the Far East Tea House couldn't get any fair-goers to even look their way, let alone sample their tea. So they poured the hot tea over ice cubes and the drink quickly became the exposition's most popular beverage." The tea bag was born the same year as iced tea, and its arrival was equally serendipitous. A Boston tea merchant began sending samples of tea in small silk bags for customers to try. Eventually, the convenient pre-measured sacks came to dominate the tea market. In 1994, according to the Tea Council, approximately 60 percent of tea brewed in the United States was prepared from tea bags; just over 1 percent was brewed from loose tea. Iced tea mixes accounted for another 25 percent of prepared tea, and the rest was made from instant tea. The Tea Council estimates total U.S. tea sales for 1994 at $3.75 billion, up from $1.8 billion in 1990. On any given day, the council says, about half the population drinks tea, with the greatest concentration of drinkers in the South and Northeast. [major tea producing regions in the world] Keeping teacups full in the United States and around the world takes a lot of tea. In 1993, 2,581,317 metric tons of tea were produced and 1,142,650 metric tons exported, according to the International Tea Committee's 1994 Bulletin of Statistics. This billion dollar business got its start centuries ago from a plant that once grew quietly undisturbed in a far corner of the world." Our penchant for drinking it ice-cold is well known, and iced tea is one of the most common beverages to order with your food when you are dining out. I don't know how popular it is elsewhere, so when I am in Europe I usually make do with water, which isn't my first choice, but I really don't like wine. Southern sweet tea is legendary and so highly sugared that Southern waiters make it a point to offer it "sweet or unsweet?" and eye anyone without the proper accent doubtfully when they insist on the former. Teeth have been known to fall out into the glass on the first sip. Herbal teas are very popular (we say "erbal", of course -- Herb is short for Herbert and has nothing to do with aromatic plants). Fruit-flavored teas are also widely available --I had a berry chai at Starbucks last night. Weird, but drinkable. I think I'll skip the apple version, though.
You omit the 'H' sound? You see, I was rather confused. I was talking to a Taiwanese person whom I was helping with her English, and she was living in Canada. She told me that an American professor had taught her not to pronounce this 'H' in 'herb'. I didn't believe this could be true, as it's rather bad form to do so here, and certainly not resembling RP, but she assured me that this was so. I assumed that perhaps I had misunderstood, as my Chinese isn't exactly what one might call 'up to scratch'. But since then, it has come to my attention that it is indeed considered perfectly correct to omit this 'H' sound. So I'm curious, which words do you do this with and which don't you?
Do you say Hello or 'Ello? Hotel or 'Otel?
Yes, we Americans pretty uniformly omit the /h/ in "herb" and its derivatives.
<<So I'm curious, which words do you do this with and which don't you? Do you say Hello or 'Ello? Hotel or 'Otel?>> No, it's just an idiosyncratic case. As far as I know, there's no other word that uses /h/ in RP that doesn't also use /h/ in General American.
Ok. Has the underlying reason something to do with the fact that the pronunciation in this case is rather akin to the French 'herbe', meaning grass? Because in Italian, they've gone one step further than in American, and have actually removed the 'h' from the front of the word, hence creating 'erbe'.
<<Ok. Has the underlying reason something to do with the fact that the pronunciation in this case is rather akin to the French 'herbe', meaning grass?>>
Yes, I think it may be due to influence from French. (The English word "herb" is derived from the Old French "herbe" or "erbe".) The explanation that I've often seen is that the British attached a stigma to /h/-dropping, because it was associated with lower-class accents like Cockney, so they made sure to pronounce "herb" with an /h/ in the standard dialect; but since /h/-dropping basically absent in American dialects, we attached no stigma to it, and thus we had no problem using the /h/-less French-style pronunciation.
Yes, this explanation makes sense. I must say, looking at us like this, we must seem rather picky and egoistic!!
A rather well-established stereotype of a policeman here (an old one, anyway) is somebody who pronounces 'h's on the fronts of words that don't begin with an 'h' at all. For example, offering would be 'hoffering', and office 'office'. I honestly have no idea whatsoever as to how this may have come about, but it strikes me as rather odd, considering that as far as I know, absolutely nobody speaks like this.
That stereotype is an example of hypercorrection ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection ) - basically, it's when someone tries to make up for a perceived linguistic deficiency, and ends up overcompensating. Another example would be people who use "whom" even in situations where "whom" is incorrect (e.g. "the person whom did this").
<<Another one is "he/she/it is about as useful as a chocolate teapot" >>
I'll take your word for that, JTT, but I've never heard that expression (in the US or anywhere else). The one that I'm used to is "... about as useful as tits on a boar." Of course, that has nothing to do with tea!
"is about as useful as a chocolate teapot"
"storm in a teacup" I have never heard those. :P In American English, there are very few words that make the h silent, such Herb (erb) and Honest (onest). Usually, it is pronounced. HOWEVER, Herb is also a name, and in that case, you DO pronounce the H. Weird, huh?
@Roi: I'm not familiar with those two either, although like JTT, I am familiar with "tempest in a teapot". (According to Wikipedia, at least, "storm in a teacup" is the British version and "tempest in a teapot" the American version). And I'm also familiar with "different kettle of fish", which Caspian brought up.
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