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Comment by avz | Hacker News Reader

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avz·

> You have to go out of your way to find a language where "tea" deviates from those patterns.

Well, there you go:

Lithuanian: arbata, https://translate.google.com/#en/lt/tea

Polish: herbata, https://translate.google.com/#en/pl/tea

Aymara: pulu, https://ay.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulu

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Yet in Polish the word "czaj" also exists and it means a very strong tea.

Herbata seems to come from Latin, as it relates to herbs.

Wikipedia says that the -ta in Lithuanian and Polish is from Latin thea, from the phrase herba thea ('tea herb'), so there is still a morpheme in common with the other languages in this case!

I think this is from New Latin, not Latin Latin.

It's funny to think that the etymology of Latin thea probably runs through Dutch! Definitely New Latin.

Interesting, I never actually encountered "czaj" used to describe tea. From a quick search it seems to be either prison slang, or a word used in eastern Poland, coming from Russia.

And then there's "czajnik" for teapot.

I know it as a prison slang word to describe a very strong tea.

In the area where I come from (Wielkopolska) czaj is a commonly known word for a "strong tea-like infusion". It's not prison slang at all, but of course there might be regional differences in the usage of this word.

Funny, my wife is from Nowy Tomyśl and I literally never heard that word being used.

I'd never heard of the native South American language Aymara - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aymara_language.

It seems fair to say a language with c. 3M speakers is "going out of one's way" though.

Presumably (all?) other native American languages have words for steeped drinks not derived from "tea" too.

FWIW, especially in North England, en-gb has the word "brew" for a hot, steeped, drink (http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=br...) which predates the bringing of tea to the UK.

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