TeaChat

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/63d181a0...

http://news.ft.com/cms/79042bce-9ff8-11d...


So... is that your avatar Jingcha?

most def. I thought it interesting, the chinese govt. has 30,000 people who moniter internet usage so that people wont get away with illegal things, whereas the CIA only has 16,000. I also thought it interesting that 'Jing Cha' means 'Police', but 'Cha' also means tea, I guess they leave it up to the subject you are talking about which determains the usage of the word... kinda like japanese, allowing you to 'fill in the blanks'.

Isn't Chinese one of those languages that relies heavily on inflection to differentiate between homophones?

~tsp who heard that in a linguistics class somewhere along the line

Kai wrote:So... is that your avatar Jingcha?

Obviously not! If you look closely, you will see that my avatar is actually smaller and cuter than the one that silly rabbit puts up. Hmmm . . . or maybe he's posting from my Centerfold in the May 2005 issue of Hot Tea Babes.

rabbit wrote:I also thought it interesting that 'Jing Cha' means 'Police', but 'Cha' also means tea,...

In China olden time (don't know when exactly...Han dynasty or before maybe?), the Chinese character for "tea" used to be the same "cha" with the meaing of "to research/investigate/check", which is the one used in "jing cha" (police). Later on, an emperor or a scholar or someone who had too much time, decided that tea needed to have a unique character dedicated to it. Thus, today's "cha" as we know it was born. And yes, intonation plays a great role in the meaning of each Chinese word.