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Comment by summner | Hacker News Reader

But where do we boil water for "herba-ta"? In "Czajnik" (keetle), where root "czaj" most definately comes from "cha".

Lithuanians call tea as "arbata", and it's boiled in "arbatinis". It also has nothing to do with "herbs". AFAIK, there is no reference to the word tea or cha anywhere in terms of tea.

Clearly, arbata comes from the same herbal tea origin, just the h got dropped somewhere along the way, herb -> arba, tea -> ta

This would appear to be confirmed based on regional dialects from this area.

In the Samogitian dialect of Lithuanian it's spelled "erbata", however the first "a" in modern Lithuanian isn't stressed, so it's very similar. Also in Kashubian (spoken in parts of northern Poland, often considered a dialect of Pomeranian) it is the same as modern Lithuanian.

On the other hand in Sambian Prussian it is "tejs", which is similar to "teja" in modern Lativan. It's interesting how two different forms emerged in the same geographic area.

Sorry, but it has everything to do with herbs. As well as Belarusian harbata, and Polish herbata it comes from "herba thea" as mziel wrote.

And the close neighbors of Romania we say "ceainic" to kettle which does come from the root word "ceai".

In Southern Romania we tend to use "ibric" more, which comes directly from Turkish.

In Transylvania, ibric is just the small pot used to brew Turkish coffee, while a tea kettle is ceainic. The terms don’t overlap.

I recently heard from a Turk that ibrik in Turkish today refers only to the small bucket used for washing oneself in Middle Eastern toilets. For the pot used to brew coffee, they say cezve.

In Poland we also have a word 'imbryk' for a teapot but it is rarely used nowadays.

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