> the invention of chai tea (spiced tea)

For the record, "chai" is just the word for tea; spices are not implied. It does not seem to have been introduced by the British, who knew it as "cha" very early and "tea" for most of their tea-relevant history; the "chai" form comes from Persia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea#Etymology

But the British did give it a promotional campaign, during which they fought against the native tendency to add spices:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masala_chai#History

"Tea" if by sea, "cha" if by land.

https://qz.com/1176962/map-how-the-word-tea-spread-over-land...

Disclosure: Im from Kenya. And chai is just Swahili for the word tea.

No mention of Polish in that article. The word for tea in Polish is “herbata” which is unique, apparently.

The "ta" in "herbata" has the same origin as "tea".

Portugal got Cha by sea (through macau)

That rule might have a hard time with Japan.

Indians can refer to spiced tea as "masala chai", but I almost always just heard "chai" - I guess that's the way it's so often prepared that the spices are implied?

Normal cha (what we call it in Gujarat) has no extra spices except perhaps some fresh ginger. Masala cha is made by boiling it with a spice mix of dry ginger, cardamom, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves, all ground to a powder. I use a proportion of 4:2:2:1:1. You can vary the proportion to your liking or add a bit of nutmeg or mace or fresh mint leaves or Indian basil (tulsi). I often add fresh grated ginger as well. At Indian grocery stores in the US you can find Wagh-bakri brand instant masala chai. Just add about 4 fl.oz of near boiling hot water to a tea pack and you get some amazingly good masala tea!

this is very interesting, never thought that black pepper can be mixed in tea! I am very tempted to try that at home. Do you add milk/sugar in masala tea?

Not GP, but yes, people in India mostly add both milk and sugar to masala tea, i.e. it is not had with just tea and the masalas - IME, at least. Can't say specifically what is common in Gujarat, though, since I haven't been there except in early childhood a few times (with parents), and didn't drink tea then.

thanks for info, cann't wait to try it.

Welcome.

Sugar as per taste but milk is a must! I use 1:2 water:milk but you can vary it. About 1 tsp of masala per cup or mug. Typically you’d heat the whole concoction till the milky water rises once or twice. I don’t put in the tea (loose or tea bag) from the start as it tends to become bitter but it must still boil with the rest for a minute or two.

thanks, the information on the process to make the tea is super helpful. I was just going to ask about it, now things become much clear to me. 1:2 water:milk? man, that's a lot of milk. But I love milk, so that will be great. Also, I guess unlike what the Chinese normally do, there is no refilling hot water into the pot/mug to drink more, right?

I now use 1:3 or less especially when using whole milk, 1:2 or 1:2.5 when using 2% fat milk. Experiment and see what you like! There is no one true recipe!

Definitely no refilling with hot water! As the whole process takes time, I used to make 3-4 cups in the morning and take the remaining tea in a thermos to work.

got it. also i am sensing when you say 1:2 you mean 1 unit milk with 2 units of water, not the other way around as I thought before.

A normal "Chai" in my home is just 1:1 Milk and Water with a teaspoon of tea, a little sugar and maybe some cardomom.

A "Masala Chai" is milk, water, green tea leaves, tea, cardomom, cloves, grated ginger, a leaf of tulsi and a bunch of other stuff according to taste.

A bit like how Britons say "tea" not "black tea", even though it's a kind of tea that a Chinese tea-drinker might find a bit unusual.

There's nothing unusual about black tea in China. Putting milk in it would be, though!

Putting milk in black tea (milk tea / boba) is very popular in China. Maybe it hasn't been historically though.

That was the OP's point.

Nope. Chai is just tea. Spices may be added for regional defaults, but you can also get normal milky tea.

Yes, it comes from Persian language speakers.

The name of the country that some insist on calling "Persia" is and has always been Iran. Earliest written records are from the Sasanid Empire. "Persia" (meaning Fars) is merely a province of Iran. Iran means "the nation of the Aryans"

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/iran

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/eran-eransah

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%A0ahrest%C4%81n%C4%ABh%C4%...

[updated links]

> Earliest written records are from the Sasanid Empire.

I assume you mean the earliest records that document the name "Iran"? Written records of that region go back multiple thousands of years before the Sasanids.

I did find on Wikipedia at various points the claims that...

- The name "Persia" is just a misunderstanding of the provincial name Fars or Pars; the country has never thought of itself that way.

- The name Iran dates to the 3rd century AD.

Those two claims, both of which you seem to be repeating here, conflict in a pretty obvious way. The classical Greeks fought against and eventually conquered an empire they knew as "Persia", the Achaemenids, several hundred years before the Sasanids were established. Cultural contact between Greece and Persia was quite extensive, with many Greeks serving as mercenaries in Persian armies.

Wikipedia saw a big fight over the endonym of Achaemenid Persia -- the page went from noting it as "Parsa", rendered in Old Persian cuneiform, to claiming it was known by the modern Arabic name, rendered in modern Arabic -- a development at least a thousand years too late to be plausible -- to now recording "ch'shassa" ("the Empire"), again in Old Persian cuneiform.

The name Iran easily could go back long before the Sasanids, in that it represents a piece of culture shared with India and therefore presumably dating to before the Indo/Iranian split. But are you aware of any evidence that the country referred to itself that way during the classical period? Judging by what you can find on Wikipedia, this question is one of major political concern to some groups, and is mostly fought on the basis of assertion rather than evidence.

I have provided links to an academic resource. Wikipedia is not an authoritative site.

Equally, it is entirely irrelevant what the Greeks called their neighboring nations.

> the modern Arabic name, rendered in modern Arabic

Have no idea what you are talking about here. Arabs called Iran "Ajam".

But your link says this:

> The word ērān is first attested in the titles of Ardašīr I (q.v.), founder of the Sasanian dynasty.

> The combination *aryānām xšaθra- is nowhere found in the Old Persian inscriptions of the Achaemenians. In the later Yašts there is only mention of airiiå and anairiiå daiŋhāuuō “Aryan” and (unspecified) “Non-Aryan lands.” Thus the term Ērānšahr was evidently an invention of the Sasanians.

If the name "Iran" dates back to the 3rd century AD, and the name "Persia" dates back to the 5th century BC, it doesn't make sense to claim that "'Persia' is merely a province of Iran".

quote:

Cyrus The Great (r. ca. 558-530 B.C.E.). Judging from a variety of evidence, such as some Medians holding important positions under Cyrus, the representation of the Medians in the Persepolis reliefs, and the Medians constituting the most important element in the Achaemenid Empire next to the Persians, it appears that the defeat of Astyages by Cyrus marked a transition from one power to another rather than the total annihilation of one by the other. In fact, Cyrus mixed Medians and Persians in his army as a prelude to his unification of the entire Iranian population and others under his banner.

end quote

http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/iran-ii1-pre-islamic-t...

And it should be further noted that Kurosh'e Kabir (Cyrus the Great) was half Median and half Persian. (His mother was Mede.) Both are Iranian tribes.

And further note that as a Persian I have no interest in diminishing the decisive and leading role of Persians in the historic context of the Iranian civilization.

Modern usage of the name "Persia" to refer to Iran by certain elements of the Anglospehere is in my opinion a malicious imperialist construct. We reject it just as we reject the absurdly denuded "Gulf".

> the "chai" form comes from Persia.

Well this all comes from the Chinese pronunciation.

Persia had old links with China through the silk road. That's how tea, silk etc. got there while Islam reached China very early.

Sure, all pronunciations ultimately derive from China.

But "chai" pronunciations do not derive directly from China, where there is no such form. And so the use of "chai" can tell us something about how tea got into a particular culture.

It might have arrived to India through Persia but it derives directly from (Northern) Chinese.

'Tea' also derives directly from Chinese but through another Chinese dialect (Southern).

You're using "directly" to mean something mysterious. Tea brought to India by non-Chinese traders speaking non-Chinese languages was referred to by a non-Chinese name. That is not an example of direct contact with China.

And as you'll see if you read the links posted variously through this subthread, the word for tea which English derived directly from contact with China (in very southerly Guangzhou) was "cha". That word was quickly replaced by "tea", derived from Dutch.

The Dutch word was derived directly from China, but, as you note, from the language spoken in a different region.

Chai or its variant Cha is an incredibly common word for tea throughout all of Asia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology_of_tea

> For the record, "chai" is just the word for tea

How interesting. 'Ceai' is the word for tea in Romanian (https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceai) and it's pronounced almost the same.

Romanian probably got that form from Slavic.

Very true.

Disclosure: Im from Kenya. And chai is just Swahili for the word tea.

Well, it didn't work closer to the places where coffee is grown in India. ;)

Coffee is still the default choice in those parts in most cases, though it's a rather different form usually made with Robusta beans (as well as Arabica) and chicory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_filter_coffee

As others have said here, the name of regular tea (without spices, etc.) in India is not "chai tea" but just "chai" (in Hindi). "Chai tea" would be like saying "tea tea" (although in two different languages (Hindi and English) in the same two-word phrase), so is redundant. I've had American friends and colleagues who made the same mistake.

From Google Translate (and listen to the sounds via the speaker button - when available):

Hindi:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

Marathi:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

Tamil (but I've never heard anyone call it that, may be the formal name, I've always heard it called "tea" (as in English) in Tamil:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

Gujarati:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

Malayalam:

https://translate.google.com/#view=home&op=translate&sl=en&t...

and so on ...

Depending on which part of India you are from tea preparation can vary. For instance in Bengal, Darjeeling Tea and its variants are not spiced. One thing this video does is give a two sided view of tea history talking about China and England as the two main countries of interest. Tea itself would have been known in the middle east much earlier than when the British brought it over. Although the cultivation outside China probably was a largely British push.