ChiramiTea and sake in kanji (茶 酒)
Tea in Japanese is 茶 (cha), and sake is 酒 (sake), usually said with a polite お in front: お茶 (ocha) and お酒 (osake). 茶 looks like a person between the grass and a tree, and 酒 is liquid (氵) next to 酉, a jar for brewing alcohol. One for the morning, one for the evening.
茶: grass, a person and a tree
Read 茶 from the top down. First comes 艹, the grass radical, which sits on top of many plant kanji: 花 (hana), flower, 草 (kusa), grass, and 葉 (ha), leaf. Under it is a little roof shaped like 人, a person, and at the bottom something very like 木, a tree. A person between the grass and the tree is an easy way to remember it, and it’s the picture the video uses.
Where 茶 really comes from
The person and the tree are a happy accident of the shape. 茶 grew out of an older character, 荼, the name of a bitter plant, which early Chinese texts also used for tea. In 荼, the 艹 says “plant” and 余 gives the sound. Take one short line out of 荼 and you get 茶: nine strokes instead of ten.
The sound travelled as well. Japanese cha comes from the Chinese reading of 茶, and so does the English word tea, which came through Dutch from tê, the way 茶 is said in the Amoy dialect of southern China.
In a few words, Japanese reads 茶 as sa instead: 茶道 (sadou, also chadou), the tea ceremony, and 喫茶店 (kissaten), an old-style café.
酒: liquid from a jar
酒 has two parts. On the left, 氵 is the water radical, three drops that mark kanji about liquids, like 海 (umi), sea, and 泳ぐ (oyogu), to swim. On the right, 酉 began as a drawing of a jar used for brewing and storing alcohol. Strictly speaking it was an ancient Chinese jar, not a Japanese one, but “a sake jar” is a fair way to picture it. Put the two together and you get the liquid from the jar: alcohol.
In old Chinese, 酉 helped with the sound too. You’ll find it in other kanji about brewing and drinking: 酢 (su), vinegar, 酔う (you), to get drunk, and the first kanji of 醤油 (shouyu), soy sauce.
Sake means any alcohol
In English, sake is Japanese rice wine. In Japanese, 酒, or more politely お酒, is alcohol of any kind: beer, wine and whisky are all お酒. The rice wine itself is 日本酒 (nihonshu), “Japan’s alcohol”, though people often just say お酒 when it’s clear what’s in the cup.
The reading changes inside longer words. It’s saka in 酒屋 (sakaya), a liquor shop, zaka in 居酒屋 (izakaya), a Japanese pub, and shu in 日本酒.
How to use them
お茶をどうぞ。
Ocha o douzo.
Please, have some tea.
緑茶と紅茶、どちらがいいですか。
Ryokucha to koucha, dochira ga ii desu ka.
Would you like green tea or black tea?
お酒は飲めますか。
Osake wa nomemasu ka.
Do you drink? (alcohol of any kind)
日本酒を一杯ください。
Nihonshu o ippai kudasai.
A glass of sake, please.
今夜、居酒屋に行きませんか。
Kon'ya, izakaya ni ikimasen ka.
Do you want to go to an izakaya tonight?
- お茶 usually means green tea. For black tea, ask for 紅茶 (koucha), literally “crimson tea”. 麦茶 (mugicha), barley tea, is a favourite cold drink in a Japanese summer.
- The お is politeness. お茶 and お酒 are what people normally say. On their own, 茶 and 酒 sound plain or rough, but inside longer words they’re perfectly normal.
- Brown is 茶色 (chairo), “tea colour”.
- Cheers is 乾杯 (kanpai). Wait until everyone has a drink, then say it together before the first sip.
Words with the same kanji
| Word | Reading | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| お茶 | ocha | tea (usually green) |
| 紅茶 | koucha | black tea |
| 喫茶店 | kissaten | café, coffee shop |
| 茶色 | chairo | brown |
| 日本酒 | nihonshu | sake, Japanese rice wine |
| 居酒屋 | izakaya | Japanese pub |
Remember it
Morning: someone sits between the grass and a tree with a cup of 茶. Evening: water poured from the old jar, 酉, fills a cup of 酒.
The kanji in this lesson
Tap Draw it to watch the stroke order. Numbers show where each stroke starts.