Why “chai”?

[schmenke]

I am not a tea drinker, but why do people order a “chai” when in fact it is a “tea”?
I don’t order a “whatevertheMandarinwordforcoffeeis” when I order my morning coffee from the local beanery?

Or, should the English language simply drop “tea” and replace it with “chai”?

Inquiring minds need to know.

:mark:

[Malbec]

I am not a tea drinker, but why do people order a “chai” when in fact it is a “tea”?
I don’t order a “whatevertheMandarinwordforcoffeeis” when I order my morning coffee from the local beanery?

Or, should the English language simply drop “tea” and replace it with “chai”?

Inquiring minds need to know.

:mark:

I might be wrong but I thought the Mandarin word for tea is Cha. Chai refers to the Indian type which traditionally was made up of the dregs of the Indian tea harvest, the best going to Britain. The wily British sold the what couldn't be sold in the UK to the Indians who added a lot of milk and sugar to mask the poor quality of the tea. They called it Chai as a corruption of the Chinese word for tea.

If you order a Chai in London you'll get a version of the sweet milky Indian tea, if they know what you're on about at all.

[Eki]

What I find strange is that sometimes the English say they are having tea when they actually are having something to eat:

Tea (meal) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_(meal))


In many parts of the British Isles,[14] tea is used to mean the main evening meal.

[Gregor-y]

For North America it's probably nothing more than another way to get you to spend $4 for a warm caffeinated beverage.

I'll be a wealthy man if I can ever get people to look at soda the same way.

[Eki]

I don’t order a “whatevertheMandarinwordforcoffeeis” when I order my morning coffee from the local beanery?


Try ordering "java".

[Mark]

It can be a regional thing. Certainly in the North East of England the meal in the middle of the day is "Dinner" and the main evening meal is "Tea", to be eaten at "Tea Time" of course.

Now my Dad was from Manchester so instead I was brought up using Lunch and Dinner was the evening meal.

This is distinct from Afternoon Tea of course ;)

[schmenke]

For North America it's probably nothing more than another way to get you to spend $4 for a warm caffeinated beverage....

Indeed. I think most on this side of the pond wouldn’t know the difference between a chai, cha or tea :p : .

[D-Type]

It depends where you are. In most of Asia and Africa tea is cha, char or chai - hence char is British army slang for tea . But what people mean by a "cup of tea" or "glass of tea" differs. In India marsala chai is sweet milky tea with added aromatic spices - this is I believe sold in North America as simply chai. However, in Kenya chai means simply sweet milky tea which is made by heating the milk and water then adding tea leaves as opposed to the English way of adding boiling water to tea leaves. - Go and read it all on Wikpedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chai) for yourself

Come to think of it, it's no different to going to a café (French word) and ordering a café au lait (French again) or an expresso, cappucino, americano or latté (all Italian). Or ordering a Scotch anywhere other than the USA as it is American for [Scotch] whisky.

[donKey jote]

It can be a regional thing. Certainly in the North East of England the meal in the middle of the day is "Dinner" and the main evening meal is "Tea", to be eaten at "Tea Time" of course.

Now my Dad was from Manchester so instead I was brought up using Lunch and Dinner was the evening meal.

This is distinct from Afternoon Tea of course ;)

And from supper :p

[Lousada]

For North America it's probably nothing more than another way to get you to spend $4 for a warm caffeinated beverage.

I'll be a wealthy man if I can ever get people to look at soda the same way.

People already look at soda the same way, they call it Red Bull.

[janvanvurpa]

Dialects.. and European, mainly Dutch traders transliterating what they thought they heard locals saying..
Down in the Malaysian archipelago it can be tsee, ot tchee. So those that got their introduction to tea via the Dutch call it something vaguely like tea or te or the

This is better:
Look up tea at Dictionary.com
1650s, earlier chaa (1590s, from Port. cha), from Malay teh and directly from Chinese (Amoy dialect) t'e, in Mandarin ch'a. The distribution of the different forms of the word reflects the spread of use of the beverage. The modern English form, along with Fr. thé, Sp. te, Ger. Tee, etc., derive via Du. thee from the Amoy form, reflecting the role of the Dutch as the chief importers of the leaves (through the Dutch East India Company, from 1610). First known in Paris 1635, the practice of drinking tea was first introduced to England 1644. The Portuguese word (attested from 1550s) came via Macao; and Rus. chai, Pers. cha, Gk. tsai, Arabic shay, and Turk. çay all came overland from the Mandarin form.

The current marketing fad who knows,lame silly marketing of starnge infusions of who knows what..
Poor hipsters need something to spendf their money on...

Much more interesting is how the same basic thing is called by such different names locally versus places far away..

Now I drink liters of tea daily. It's 22.59 and I'm having "en liten slurk'' now...hmmmm..
I drink what is called in Engleski "black tea", brewed strong, and with a tad of milk and a bit of sugar---the way Gawd descended to earth and showed us how to to it properly, it is written! But when I'm in China where the word "Chai" came from, it isn't "black tea" it "RED tea"--'hong cha' for the tea, and the way I drink it, available everywhere in the South Coast, it's "lai cha" or milk tea...

All teas are chock full of anti-oxidants, "Red" tea more than Green, and research on aging has shown that massive quantities of daily anti-oxidants can essentially nearly arrest the visible aging process. Now I have broken so many bones and ripped so many ligaments and have scars over laid on scars from i have no idea how many serious operations (4 serious in last 4 years), but friends swear--just a hint of jealousy, and confusion---that aside from waist-line, I haven't changed in 20 years....just a tad more grey, stylishly at the temples...
They say in China "Drinking a daily cup of tea will surely starve the apothecary. "


“Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? - how did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea.”
Sydney Smith, English writer (1771-1845)

And lastly a genius:
“Ecstasy is a glass of tea and a piece of sugar in the mouth.”
Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)

[gadjo_dilo]

Right now I'm drinking a cup of chai. We spell it "ceai" . Checked its origins in the dexonline and see it comes from russian.

[Eki]

In Helsinki slang, "tsaikka" means tea. It is said to have become from the Russian word "Chai" for tea.

[odykas]

Try ordering "java".

:laugh:

[Gregor-y]

Personally I use honey rather than sugar in my black teas, with milk only when I'm at home because the work 'fridge is too small for the office already.

[janvanvurpa]

In Helsinki slang, "tsaikka" means tea. It is said to have become from the Russian word "Chai" for tea.


I thought it was tchaju with the final ryss 'u' said like 'a'. Maybe that was translators best effort in my 1955 copy of Ökänd Soldat

I'm having a cup now...

[Eki]

I thought it was tchaju with the final ryss 'u' said like 'a'. Maybe that was translators best effort in my 1955 copy of Ökänd Soldat

I'm having a cup now...
Yes, tsaju is another Finnish slang word for tea.

[janvanvurpa]

Yes, tsaju is another Finnish slang word for tea.


Well it's 21.05 and having another cup and thought of a wonderful quote from a wonderful movie by the really great film makers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger called "A Canterbury Tale" from 1944. In it an American Sergeantin England is not too thrilled by the tea offered by a British Sergeant, "How do you drink the stuff?"
Gibbs replies that Johnson has joined the tea drinkers of the world, for the only countries that haven't been defeated and conquered yet by the Nazis and Japanese are the tea-drinking ones, England, Russia, and China.


A great line in a great little movie..

Anything by Pressburger and Powell is worth seeing---with a cuppa to keep your mind open.

[MrJan]

It can be a regional thing. Certainly in the North East of England the meal in the middle of the day is "Dinner" and the main evening meal is "Tea", to be eaten at "Tea Time" of course.

Now my Dad was from Manchester so instead I was brought up using Lunch and Dinner was the evening meal.

This is distinct from Afternoon Tea of course ;)

Not sure it's actually a regional thing. Knew a girl from near M'cr that said dinner instead of lunch, likewise there are people that I know here in bumpkin land that refer to dinner and tea/supper. I even know a few that call a 10 o'clock break 'breakfast', which is patently absurd.

it is amazing!http://www.castoffdebt.com

[Storm]

because chai rules schmonkey!