New appreciation for tea with tisanes

Thanks for the word "kelpy", Jim! I think "kelpy" is now a permanent part of my vocabulary for sencha.

Strangely, I just tasted a shu Pu'er (You Le Mountain, given me by a friend) that had a bit of kelpiness to it.

/Lew

I'm sure BabelCarp has these entries: kelp 昆布 Chinese kelp こぶち Japanese

I'm not sure if I was the first to associate the word kelp with sencha. If I was then I got my association from the Internet where the two are processed together.

Jim

PS If my characters get mangled then blame it > "Space Cowboy" writes:

Hi. just want to share with all the tea fans.. there is good blend oolong.. it s called " osmanthus oolong tea" it is very good...

If anybody is paying attention, drop the last Japanese character. That character is the first of the two Kana characters for tea.

Jim

Actually, no, but thanks for thinking of me. I don't see any evidence that kun1bu4 is used by Chinese people in talking about tea. Maybe we can get MarshalN and Danny to start using it, and then, who knows?

I don't generally put herbal terms into Babelcarp, but kun1bu4cha2 (kombucha) seems to be a bit hit on the Chinese Internet, so I just inserted an entry for that brew so people who look it up will know it isn't a "real" tea.

/Lew

Jim, I have in the past mixed dried fruit with the teas with mixed success. Apple seemed to go the best (really dried apple) but cranberries not so great (slightly wet) perhaps because of the acitidy. Do you have specific fruits you liked more than others?

Also, I have been looking for organically grown dried flowers - can you recommend some place?

-P

Using this group's software for sending Chinese/Japanese characters is vexatious, and I'm not going to do it.

WIkipedia Japan has an entry for Kobucha (entry's titlehowever, is written in kanji: Sino-Japanese characters, thus not commiting to any certain pronunciation). The first line of text tells us, using phonetic script (in this case, hiragana) that those kanji are read as both "kobu-cha" and as "koNbu-cha."

Following up on that, I searched Google Japan, and found that the use of the kanji is, by far, the most frequent way of writing this word in Japan. (Please note that the use of kanji specifically *avoids* coming down on *how* to "pronounce" or "read" that kanji.) Number of hits using the kanji alone: 368,000. Hits using "Kobu-cha" (entered phonetically with hiragana): 26,600. Hits using "Konbu-cha" (entered phonetially with hiragana): 794.

For the sake of completeness, I also Googled these two phonetic versions as written with a *different* phonetic "alphabet:" katakana. Katakana is best known as the script used for loan-words from other languages (such as makudonarudo for McDonald's), but it is also used for other purposes. Katakana can be used for writing names of things being focused on in scientific discourse, and can also function like *italics*, to make a word stand out for special attention. I suspect most of the hits for the katakana versions fall in these two categories. Anyhow, "konbu-cha" (written in katakana) got 9,500 hits, and "kobu-cha" (in katakana) got 964 hits.

Thus, when comparing the hits for the specified readings, Kobu-cha in hiragana gets the most hits (26,600), followed by the *other* reading, koNbu-cha, when written in katakana (9,500). Third place goes to kobu- cha in katakana (964), then koNbu-cha in hiragana (794). This needs to be kept in context: the kanji version, with no specifiable reading, got 368,000 hits. I suspect that one reason the katakana version of koNbu-cha was so high because the writers were making a point of specifying a personal/contextual preference for that reading.

Using Google Japan to try to pin down issues of word frequency/ prefered orthography (cf. "spelling") in Japanese is a complex issue.

james-henry holland hobart and william smith colleges geneva, new york

So specifically what are these two characters konbu,kobu,katakana,hiragana. I saw them on a Japanese tin in the Sasha thread in January. You'll probably be okay posting Asian characters if you don't use his ISP!?

Jim

PS I sent email previously with my corrected email address and never heard back. My email address is: http://i16.t> On Feb 15, 2:20 pm, "Space Cowboy"

...I delete me...

...I delete you...

I like citrus and berries of any kind. You want dried and not adulterated with sugar for example. I have apple and cherry trees and prefer the blossoms over the fruit. I basically buy my tisanes at an herbal shop. I know botanical websites are dime a dozen. I bought some batches of flowers a florist would have tossed away. I can't wait for my wife's Valentine roses to wilt. My favorite flower lilac. I like it in my aftershave and tea.

Jim

PS I'm > >

Frontier Herbs has a selection of dried organic ingredients. Shen

Hi, Jim, While I was in Chicago, I noticed a very large selection of tisanes at the TeaGschwender shop. They also have many online. I got a Blood Orange for my sister and she's been mixing a bit of it with Yunnan Blacks and liking it. I even like it "straight". It could be because they are a Germany-based company that the selection is so vast. Shen

Now I'm not quite sure what you mean so I hope this makes sense.

Your first word (which you called "Chinese") would also be the Japanese word for "kelp" written in Kanji and, according to my dictionary at least, can be pronounced as both "kobu" and "konbu". No idea which pronunciation is more common.

Your second line would be the Hiragana for "kobu" (without that stray "chi" at the end ;-).

To expand on what "Thitherflit" wrote: the Kanji version of the Wikipedia article about "konbu" is just a redirect to the Katakana spelling. The article generally uses the Katakana spelling (konbu) and the Kanji in parantheses in the first line.

Like Thitherflit said, the situation is reversed for "konbucha" which seems to be mostly spelt in Kanji. To further confuse you I looked it up in a very popular Japanese online dictionary (the site is in Japanese) and it lists the Kanji and transliterates it only to the Hiragana "kobucha" (without the "n").

Not sure if any of this is useful to you though ;-).

HTH, Stefan

Thanks for the Romanji and Kana clarification.

Could you provide the URL of the Japanese dictionary?

Jim

...buzz cut here and there...

Jim, Just a note on a green I had yesterday in a restaurant: Prince of Peace -ugh! old fishy/nasty kelpy. Stay away from this stuff. They had re-tinned the tea and I really don't know which green it was

- no one seemed to know. But, ugh! Shen

I see Prince of Peace teabags in the discount stores. If it is a Chinese brand I don't see it in Chinatown. It could be in the teabag section which I pass by. In general I find Chinese teabags better quality and value than Indian or Ceylon packed for the West.

Jim

It's sort of a Chinese brand, or at least it's run by a bunch of Chinese Christian fundamentalists. I recall that their website talks a lot about the good works they are doing in China, and not very much at all about the quality of their products.

--scott

I'll have to get me a box the next time I'm out. I like a tea like Shen described it when I'm sick. Something to wake me up from the dead so to speak.

Jim