[dwyer]

I'm no Chinese expert, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I've found that the Chinese word 茶 (cha) doesn't always necessarily mean tea, but can refer generically to a number of different brewed drinks. e.g. barley tea (大麥茶), ginger tea (薑茶), golden oats tea (燕麥茶), etc. all of which translate to tea, but often contain no tea leaves. It may seem like a nitpick, but when you're in China and order what you expect to be a ginger flavored tea, only to receive a cup of hot water with chopped ginger at the bottom, the distinction can be important. That isn't to say you can't simply order 茶 in China and receive what you would expect, as long as you're expecting green tea. Likewise, if you simply order tea in England, you'll likely receive what the Chinese call 紅茶 (red tea). So in my mind, the words aren't exactly equivalent and I wonder how much the different variations of tea and cha relate to themselves and each other.

Edit: Applied jpatokal's correction.

[Sean1708]

Reading your comment I'm a bit confused about what your point is. Even in English tea doesn't necessarily mean a drink brewed in tea leaves, which you presumably know since you yourself say:

> e.g. barley tea (大麥茶), ginger tea (薑茶), golden oats tea (燕麥茶), etc. all of which translate to tea

You call all of these things tea (and I would call them all tea too), so I'm not really sure why you say that cha doesn't necessarily translate to tea.

[klipt]

I have heard some people argue that "tea" refers only to things made using the plant Camellia sinensis (e.g. black tea, green tea, white tea) and everything else (e.g. rooibos) is a "tisane".

[romwell]

Never heard "tisane" being used by anyone.

Most of the people in the US don't seem to care much about the distinction between infusions containing tea leaves and infusions that don't (when it's not just tea leaves); those who do, would often ask whether it's a caffeinated "tea" or not (infusions containing tea leaves usually contain caffeine).

Personally, I prefer to use the term "herbal infusion", because it unambiguous and relatively widespread.

However, in common usage people will say "herbal tea", both in English and Russian, even when aware that the tea plant is not in the mix. It seems like the crusade for "tea/chai" meaning something brewed from tea leaves is not only doomed, but has been lost before the West started to drink tea.

[ianleighton]

Tisane probably comes from French, where it is relatively common (at least understood, and a stickler for tea would correct your usage) and perhaps one would use it in English like other French culinary terms like “à la mode”

[klipt]

Wiktionary says it went

English <- French <- Latin <- Greek

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tisane#Etymology

Interesting that in English it starts with the "tea" sound, but has a completely separate origin (I don't think the ancient Greeks were even aware of Chinese tea...)

[jdmichal]

I've never heard "tisane" before, but it seems to mean "herbal tea". In which case, I've seen that distinction before also. ("Tea" having the actual tea plant, and "herbal tea" being any other plant-based brew.)

[Gigablah]

A better example might be 肉骨茶 (pork bone broth) which isn't even a beverage.

[devdas]

Anything else is a herbal tea or tisane.

Ginger tea in India is a sweet, milky tea with camellia sinensis and ginger for flavour.

[benhsu]

There are similar words in English. My favorite example is Pudding, which can mean anything from black pudding (a sausage), to yorkshire pudding (a bread) to plum pudding (a dessert)

source: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-brits-talk-about-...

[mseebach]

And (as covered in the article, but bears repetition), confusingly also in many areas simply means the dessert course. You can have apple pie for pudding.

[stordoff]

Yorkshire being a good example: you can have Yorkshire pudding as part of your main course, and then pudding afterwards (but sometimes might have Yorkshire pudding as pudding).

[stordoff]

Are Yorkshire puddings bread? I've never thought of them as such.

[0xffff2]

They are made from batter rather than dough, which I think disqualifies them as bread. On the other hand, corn bread and banana bread are also made from a batter, so you could call Yorkshire pudding a bread based on those. If I really wanted to assign them to a more common category than pudding, I would say they are a cake.

[k__]

lol, in German we only have one word for batter and dough.

[chaostheory]

So one thing that a lot of people, including the author of the article, may not realize is that Chinese 'dialects' aren't really dialects. They are each different languages spoken by different ethnic groups, kind of like how Spanish and Italian are different languages but still related. These different languages are called dialects mainly for political reasons, with the main one being unification. It's useful to think of China as Europe, unified through force instead of legislation.

Anyways, I'm going to disagree with you. imo 茶 has the same meaning in different parts of China. It's just said differently in differents parts of China just as like it's called different things in different parts of Europe. The only difference is that in China it's written as the same character.

[philwelch]

A common saying in linguistics is, “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”.

[qihqi]

What you have described is exactly what happened in Qin dynasty 2000 years ego. Then those languages evolved together and all influenced what is the modern Chinese.

It is funny that this is the reverse process as how Latin evolved into Italian and Spanish etc after the fall of Rome.

[jjcc]

The reason that China split and unite again and again is all the dialects/languages share the same characters even sound differently. The phonetic based Latin can easily evolve differently to match the pronunciations of dialects. That's why after Rome collapse there are many new nations and can not unite again.

[bbatha]

Tea is also used in the same way in the West for example Rooibos, mint, and chamomile are all popular “herbal teas” that don’t contain any tea leaves.

[_0nac]

Nit: Western (black) tea is 紅茶 hongcha, lit. "red tea". Chinese black tea refers to fermented teas like pu-erh, which are not the same thing.

[mziel]

Interestingly pu-erh is often referred to as "red tea" in Western countries.

[dagw]

I've only heard "red tea" used to refer to rooibos tea.

[mziel]

Specifically in Poland: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pu-erh

Translating the article: Pu-erh (chin. 普洱茶, pǔ’ěr chá) – a kind of tea that is classified as red tea in Poland (black tea in China since the Chinese classify the tea according to the colour of the brew, as opposed to Europeans who classify tea according to the colour of dried leaves).

[davedx]

Ahh, Polish, also one of those outlier languages that doesn't call tea by the two words in the article :)

[mziel]

The article has it wrong, as I mentioned in another comment. Polish word for tea is "herbata" which comes from "herbal tea".

[alanh]

Same here. I live in San Francisco and to the best of my knowledge, Pu-erh seems to be called just that. “Red tea” is not often said, but I would assume it meant rooibos. (BTW — if you haven't tried rooibos, please do. It is delicious.)

[nimrod0]

In modern usage you're right, 茶 is used as 'beverage'.

When the character was created (appears in Erya under 'plants', so a very early character), it referred to one of a number of 'bitter herbs,' and linguists think it might have sounded like 'rlya'.

The character is composed of the top part, 艹 (classically written as 艸), meaning 'herbaceous plant' and the bottom part, 余, which supplied the pronunciation 'lya'.

There are two modern characters that come out of this, 茶 (cha) and 荼 (tu); the first one is used for tea/beverage, the second one has been borrowed a lot for its sound but at least one of its meanings is still 'bitter plant'.

[realitygrill]

My impression (as a heritage speaker) is that cha's usage has simply broadened a bit, in the same way that American English has herbal teas and fruit teas. These also don't contain any tea, and have a different term, tisane. But both cha and tea still primarily refer to, well, tea leaves.

[charlysl]

Although I don't speak Mandarin I am quite familiar with Oriental culture and my impression is that it means "brew". They have a bewildering variety of infusions, more often than not medicinal, and sometimes I have the impression it means anything with hot water. In fact, its common to just have plain hot water.

[baby]

Including the hundreds of different bubble tea.

It’s also used to refer to dim sum in hong kong as in “yamcha” (drink tea) which colloquially means to eat dim sum

[bllguo]

I have just realized that I have never heard anything remotely close to "dim sum" when talking about dim sum, in both Mandarin and Cantonese. I've only heard "ying cha" or "yum cha." In fact I had to search up why it's "dim sum" in English just now. It literally means "snack"