I want to throw the “Chai tea latte” back at the Baristas. What the HELL is in that concoction?
The Teltley’s round bags used to be great, good dark flavor. Not so much anymore 
I may have to start double bagging my mugs.
And Russian (borrowed, I’m sure).
The Starbucks stuff is a sort of chai masala with steamed milk, but it tastes wrong because it has allspice in it instead of cloves.
Apparently there were two words for tea in China. In the north they called it Cha and in the south they called it Te. These two words spread around the world. Albanian, Arabic, Azerbaijani, Bulgarian, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Japanese, Kazakh, Kurdish, Marathi, Mongolian, Persian, Punjabi, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, Turkish, and Vietnamese use a variant of Cha. Armenian, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, German, Hebrew, Irish, Malay, Polish, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, and Welsh use a variant of Te.
That’s interesting and backs up what I had been told re the use of ‘cha’ in Ireland as another word for tea. I’ve heard it used quite a bit, it’s certainly in use in Dublin anyway. I had been told it was something to do with the original word for tea but never checked it out before now.
The Wikipedia article I assume you’re referencing contains exactly one citation, so I wouldn’t put a great deal of stock into it.
I see fifty-eight online citations and twenty-three print citations.
Hmm. It’s called ‘cha’ in Cantonese, which is the most prolific dialect in southen China.
‘Cha’ is also British (esp. London) slang for tea.
Oops just read the Wikipedia article and see they’re talking about Hokkianese. Ignore my comment.
There is only one in the etymology section, I mean.
I just had to be different. I’m Irish and I drink tea with no milk or sugar. I used to like sugary, milky tea but now I find it too sweet.
Which, on reflection, is exactly what I linked to, so it really shouldn’t have been that difficult to figure out what I meant.
Another vote for Black. I was staying with a family in Manchester once and after 3 days of choking down tea with milk I asked for it without milk or sugar. They thought it was the funniest thing they ever heard but kindly served the crazy American kid his black tea.
And to be honest what I really like in my unsweetened, undairied, black tea is a whole lot of ice cubes.