usucha, koicha

[Drax]

All right, this one's for the Japanese buffs, but let's see if we can get everybody involved!

usui -- うすい　（薄い）; thin
koi -- こい　（濃い）; thick

usucha -- thin matcha
koicha -- thick matcha

For those not familiar with Japanese, both usui and koi are "i-adjectives" (they end in "i" and conjugate in a specific way).

Normally an i-adjective would modify a noun (like cha -- tea) directly: "usuicha" or "koicha." In many cases, you can drop the "i" and prefix it onto the noun: "usucha" or "kocha." This is particularly common with colors. For example, "aoi" is blue/green. "mori" is forest. Thus Aomori is blue/green forest (and the name of a prefecture in Japan).

So perhaps you can see the dilemma. If you follow one method, you get:

usuicha
koicha

If you follow the other method, you get

usucha
kocha

Except what we get in reality is a mix:

usucha
koicha

Whoops? The only reason I can think of off-hand why this happened is that "kocha" is probably first thought of as　紅茶, or "black tea" (even though it's technically "koucha", or a long "o").

Okay. Yes, this is extremely anal, but always frustrating to run across stuff like this that doesn't seem to jive together. Anybody have any ideas on this one? (:

Maybe I should just email the folks at Ippodo... hehe!

[chingwa]

as an alternative,　ko-cha could mean "child's tea" which I would assume would be a lighter tea like houjicha, or other toasted/roasted tea to get rid of the caffeine.

of course, that assumes you just listen to the pronunciation without regard to the actual kanji... so yeah... just making conversation


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true -i adjectives can function either way... with the -i or with the の supposition between adjective and noun. Taking into account the Japanese propensity to drop vital parts of words and sentences so that understanding can arise metaphorically through the ephemeral "context" of situations though, it's more likely that to pronounce Usuicha without either the -i or -no- is an end unto itself... after all, tea is just tea...

[chingwa]

actually... your explanation makes a lot of sense (mine was just an attempt at smarmy wit...). I hadn't read 紅茶before... but now that I have I am even more committed to my previous statement about the ephemerality of japanese... and it goes both ways, whether there is context or not:

茶=cha (tea)
紅=aka (red)
or...
紅=beni (DEEP red... umm...)
so, therefore...
紅茶=koucha (huh???)

[Salsero]

Oh dear, what I have walked in on?

[Pentox]

Heh, this always makes me wonder, just like the Hojicha vs. Houjicha thing.

[Space Samurai]

Like Bato vs Batou.

[murrius]

Tomato vs Tomahto?

[chingwa]

Oh dear, what I have walked in on?

yes.. indeed!


The houjicha vs hojicha is a much more straightforward issue... While English doesn't distinguish between a long o and a short o, Japanese(sort of) does by combining two kana:

ほ - transliterated as "ho"
う - transliterated as "u"

together, ほう, in ほうじ茶 (houjicha). but since japanese syllable concepts are fundamentally different from english sounded letter concepts a romanization/westernization translation must occur. technically, BOTH ways are right depending on which romanization system you use... but even more technically NEITHER of them are right since they are only approximations of the original language.

This leads to even more confusion many times because ほ(ho) and ほう(hou)can mean two different things in Japanese. Thus it is always better to use a more accurate romanization system that follows the kana more closely by interjecting weird (in english) vowels that seem unnecessary. In the end, they are very necessary. And of course it's even better not to romanize at all, but that isn't really a subject for a tea forum I'm sure.

(and yes, same issue with Batou/Bato)

[chamekke]

Argh. I saw a discussion on this topic some months ago, but I can't remember why. It may have been the "wakeiseijaku" discussion group on Yahoo, or maybe its predecessor "chanoyu". IIRC both spellings/pronunciations (usucha, usuicha) are correct. The upshot of the discussion was that most people in the Urasenke school of tea ceremony say usucha and most Omotesenke folks say usuicha. I think.

You say tomayto
And I say tomahto

Anyhow, most of the time my tea sensei says ousu (おうす) rather than usucha, so we neatly sidestep the problem that way. I haven't a clue how it's spelled in kanji, though

[Pentox]

Wow thanks chingwa, i've really been wondering about that a lot since I see both romanizations a lot. And it's pretty evenly split on them as well.

[Drax]

Wow thanks chingwa, i've really been wondering about that a lot since I see both romanizations a lot. And it's pretty evenly split on them as well.

There's a couple of different ways to "convert" Japanese into English. What chingwa describes is the root of a lot of problems that often arise. For example, "Tokyo" (in English) is more properly rendered "Toukyou." Not to mention that the American way of saying is like "To-ki-yo" is technically different than "To-kyo." (i.e. ki-yo and kyo mean different things).

Chingwa -- thanks for taking the time to explain that o/ou difference. As for the the thick/thin issue, I'm pretty sure the "koicha" is 濃い in reference to the thickness, while 紅茶 is "koucha" in reference to the redness (or blackness in English).

Chamekke -- very interesting! It would figure that different people do say different things (interesting, though, that I haven't run into "usuicha" on any vendor sites yet). I guess, when in Japan, do as the Japanese do.