Boba: Yes, It's Spelled In PINYIN and People Have Been Reading It WRONGLY

I remembered writing about Chinese language schools and pinyin (read here). I decided to find another topic to write and this came to my mind. It's all about boba which is another term for tapioca balls. There have been many names given to certain items. Tofu can be called tao hu in Hokkien, the word itself is Japanese, tokwa in Filipino, and dŏu fu in Mandarin pinyin. Take note that any numbers are what are often referred to by Chinese language teachers as the tone. Also, I'm still self-studying Mandarin yet again using the Taoli application. 

Here's a children's book written by Katrina Liu, a Chinese-American, and illustrated by Indonesian artist Dhidit Prayoga. The book's title in Mandarin Chinese would be spelled in pinyin as Wŏ Aì Bō Ba Nǎi Chá. However, it's very easy to misread the pinyin. I could remember how people were misreading the surnames of people. It's like how people tend to read the pinyin at the face value rather than how it's supposed to be read. It can be confusing but with practice, one can at least learn the basics of pinyin. That's why zhuyin was often used but I find its use to be less practical (but can still be used as a mental exercise) while pinyin is used by the international audience.

Referring to the pinyin table, b is read as a softer p while p is read as a harder p. So bōba is technically read as pōpa. I wasn't too surprised to find out either. I thought boba was just an English word. However, the English language has integrated several words from other cultures. For example, bourgeois (nobility) and rendezvous are both French words. In Filipino, the word susi is from the Hokkien word for key, ampao is from the Hokkien word for cereal, and the use of the words pancit and tokwa. So, people have been reading boba at face value but the Chinese have been reading it differently. 

As for the origin of tapioca pearls? Well, turns out that while tapioca gets its roots in both North American and South American, According to Bubble Tea Supply, it was something invented in the 1980s:

Bubble Tea originated in Taiwan in the early 1980's at a small tea stand. 

Elementary school children would look forward to buying a cup of refreshing tea after a long, hard day of work and play. Tea stands were set up in front of the schools and would compete for business with the best selling tea. One concession owner became popular with her tea when she started adding different fruit flavoring to her tea. Because of the sweet and cool taste, children loved the taste. Soon, other concessions heard about the "unique" and popular tea, so they started to add flavoring to their teas. When adding flavor, the tea and flavoring needed to be shaken well for a good all around taste. This formed bubbles in the drink, which came to be known as "Bubble Tea."

In 1983 Liu Han-Chieh introduced Taiwan to tapioca pearls. The new fad was to add tapioca pearls into a favorite drink. Most of the time tapioca pearls were served in cold infused tea. After the tea and flavor were shaken well, it topped tapioca pearls that were sitting on the bottom of a clear cup. The tapioca pearls also looked like bubbles, thus also became to known as "Bubble Tea." Bubbles floated on the top your drink and bottom of your drink.

I was wondering why Taiwanese milk tea tends to be associated with boba or what's commonly called tapioca pearls. Boba gets accepted as a proper English word like how tofu (which is a Japanese word) is accepted as such. Some of my fellow Filipinos have referred to it as either as some kind of sago (hence the name ZAGU Philippines, owned by Genny Lim Santos) though sago is from sago palm trees and the pearls are made from tapioca. Filipinos have also been calling it boba and reading the b as a b. I guess it's because some Filipino words of Chinese origin were mostly derived from Hokkien. However, the Filipino word for tea is "tsaa" and the Mandarin pinyin for tea is also cha(2) while the Hokkien for tea is te.