红茶
hóngchá · HSK 3
black tea
🍵 红 (red) + 茶 (tea) — Chinese 'red tea' is English 'black tea'
Chinese names the brew by the reddish liquor; English names it by the dark dried leaves. Same drink, different reference point. 红 = red, 茶 = tea.
红 — silk radical 糹/纟 + work 工 (phonetic)
红 is a semantic-phonetic compound. The silk radical 糹 (simplified 纟) signals the meaning, since the character originally referred to a kind of pink or light-red dyed silk. The right side 工 supplies the sound. Over time the meaning broadened from the dye color to 'red' in general.
茶 — grass radical 艹 + 余 (phonetic)
茶 combines the grass radical 艹, indicating a plant, with 余 serving as the phonetic component. It originally derived from the older character 荼, which referred broadly to bitter herbs; a stroke was dropped during the Tang dynasty to distinguish the tea plant specifically. Today it means tea.