h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

How is it pronounced? Everyone I know pronounces the "ch" as in "chuh" but given the word's root, I'm thinking a hard "kuh" sound would be more appropriate. I looked all over the net (spent half an hour on Google and that's a lot for me) and couldn't find anything!

I work with a young guy from India and he pronounces it with the "ch" like "chuh" so I think that's the way it's said.

Indeed, as Eccentra rightly points out, the "ch" in chai is pronounced soft, like the "ch" in church. It is a Sanskrit/Hindi "ch" not a Greek "ch," so it is not pronounced "kai."

Blessings on all chai-drinkers,

Chaiwallah

'chai' also means tea (just plain tea, of any description) in Russian, and in many other slavic languges. In this case, the 'ch' sound is pronounced as in 'church'. 'Chai', the spicy, milky drink described in this entry, became very popular in the US at chain bookstore/cafes such as Borders, Barnes&Noble, and that evil empire, Starbucks, and I was always amused that they listed it as 'Chai tea', since this is redundant.

To be honest, in India "chai" also just means tea, though usually what they call "mixed-up", i.e. with the milk and tea, and probably sugar too, all boiled up together.

What has become known as "chai" in the west should, for accuracy's sake, be called "masala chai," spiced chai. However, on the roadsides of India, "chai" is almost always automatically spiced anyway. It's just in the smarter hotels and restaurants that you would have to specify Masala chai, and you would probably be served a rather miserable, weak brew.

I heart chai. I was watching The Jeff Corwin Experience on Animal Planet. He was doing a show on lions in India and I suffered a pang of jealousy when he sat down with a guy on the side of the road and had chai with him.

Don't be jealous, Eccentra! Go to my personal space, print out the chai recipe, or go back to the original entry for this thread. make some chai, burn some incense, play some Bollywood music, or Ravi Shankar, or whatever, close your eyes and be there!



Chaiwallah

In Mongolian - which is not a Lsawic language - it's chai, too.

Methos

Erm, what is a Lsawic language?


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Sometimes, I think in every language southeast of.. say.. Poland, it's chai.

God, I'm sorry that must have been one of the best or worst typos I ever managed to create - of course, I meant Slavic languages. Sorry!

And it would be interesting to know where the word chai originated from. It is originally an Indian word?

Methos

As far as I know the word "chai" derives from the Chinese "cha." It was the English who brought tea to India, which they traded forcibly in exchange for opium, which they grew in India and dumped in huge amounts into China, giving rise to the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century. One of Britain's less glorious imperial exercises. Off the top of my head I can't remember the details, but it was all rather sordid.

Initially the tea brought from China to England in the late 18th century was such a rare luxury commodity that the leaves were kept in locked tea-caddies, and the lady of the house kept the key about her person lest the undeserving "staff" helped themselves.

In China, the tradition was to drink green tea, but the early shipments of tea to England had fermented in the sailing-ships' holds on the long journey home round the Cape. On arrival in England, the tea-leaves had turned black, but everyone assumed that this was the way it was supposed to be. So in the west we have drunk black tea ever since. And even in India during the Raj, where the tea was first grown ( outside of China and Japan )the British deliberately fermented and blackened their tea because that was the way they liked it.

The other long-term drinkers of black tea were the Tibetans, who from ancient times had imported tea from China in the form of large, hard bricks of packed, fermented tea. The Tibetans traditionally stew up "Po-cha" with water, yaks milk, yak butter, salt, and soda. This vile brew is just about drinkable if you think "soup." But it is very sustaining, they say, at high altitude in the bitter cold and thin air of Tibet. I've drunk it in the hot and humid air of Sarnath, and found it a bit of an ordeal. Give me good old Indian masala chai any day of the week.

God, you know really much about tea. And then the Mongolian have taken their word for tea from the Chinese since they also buy their tea from them.

Methos

Erm thanks, amazing what useless info one accumulates over a life-time. A possible benefit of ageing. In what form the Mongolians drink their tea, I'm not sure, but being both nomads and Vajrayana Buddhists, probably similar to the Tibetans. Do you know>

Erh, "Vajrayana Buddhists"? I thought, the form of buddhism practised in Mongolia was called Lamaism. It's roughly the same as in Tibet.

And the mongolian drink their tea spiced with salt and milk. There's also the variation where you also put some butter in it - it is then served as breakfast or a snack.

Methos

Vajrayana ( The Diamond, or Adamantine Vehicle )is the term used by Tibetan Buddhists. Lamaism is a rather condescending term that used to be used by western anthropologists. It's no longer really considered polite! Vajrayana is a subdivision of the Mahayana ( Great Vehicle ) also known as the northern school of Buddhism, as opposed to the Hinayana ( Lesser Vehicle ) also known as Theravada, the School of the Elders, or southern school.

Mahayana includes Zen, Ch'an, Vajrayana, and so on. It is mainly found in Tibet, China, Ladakh, Nepal, Mongolia, Japan, Korea and parts of Russia. Hinayana is mainly found in Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, parts of Indonesia, and Myanmar. Both Mahayana and Hinayana have large numbers of followers in the west.

And indeed, the Mongolian brand of Buddhism is identical with Tibetan Buddhism. Recently, both the Dalai Lama and Panchen Otrul Rimpoche, amongst others, have been doing quite a lot of work in ( formerly Soviet ) Mongolia to restore and re-vitalise Buddhism there. It was severely persecuted under Stalin and susbsequent Russian rulers.

I know that the Buddhist monks in Mongolia have been presecuded. I'm doing Mongolian studies at universities.

I didn't know that Lamaism was considered impolite since "lam" is actually the Mongolian word for monk.

Methos

That's really interesting. I wonder what the etymology of "lama" is? As far as I know it is a Tibetan word meaning "teacher" and is always used in the Tibetan Buddhist context to translate the Sanskrit equivalent, "guru." Guru in Sanskrit means "dark to light," but I don't know if the word lama in Tibetan carries an equivalent subtext.

I wonder if "lam" meaning monk in Mongolian is a loan-word from Tibetan that came into Mongolia along with the Tibetan Buddhists "teacher" monks? After all, it was Tibet that converted the sons of Genghis Khan to Buddhism, and the Mongolian Khans in turn who gave the title "Dalai"- Geat Ocean - Lama to the then head of the Gelugpa sect in the fourteenth century.

Do Mongolian and Tibetan belong to the same language group?

Mongolian and Tibetan - as languages - do not belong to the same family. I don't know if the Mongolian word "lam" derives from a Tibetan word but I can look it up if you want me to.

Methos

If you can be bothered, it'd be interesting. It can hardly be coincidental, can it?