Comment by 🚀 clseibold
Re: "My beloved kinds of Tea are Vanilla chai tea and spiced…"
@meidam To be fair, almost everything that starbucks has comes from real cultures, lol. Chai is indian tea. Dragfyre lists some of the spices, but there's also cinnamon, black pepper, and ginger. And you can make it with or without milk.
I'm sure vanilla tea is not unique to starbucks, but haven't tried it myself.
@dragfyre Yeah, but chai in english is not 100% equivalent to chai in hindi/farsi. In English, it's a stand-in for a set of spices, so we use it as a modifier word for specific type of tea, or even a specific type of spiced drink or baked goods.
Also, languages do this all the time. You'd be surprised how many english words borrowed into other languages become duplicated in the same way :D
So people who are picky about the chai tea vs. chai crap don't understand linguistics at all. We've imported the hindi word, but only so that it refers to a specific set of spices, a specific type of tea. In which case, "Chai tea" makes complete sense in English.
tl;dr: Chai *doesn't* mean tea in English. Just because we've borrowed the word doesn't mean it has the same meaning!
🚀 clseibold [🛂 Code of Conduct rule 1 violations]
2025-07-25 · 9 months ago
1 Later Comment
🦔 bsj38381 [OP] · 2025-07-27 at 00:47:
Huh, I honestly didn't know Chai tea was originally made from India, it's pretty tasty tbh.
Original Post
My beloved kinds of Tea are Vanilla chai tea and spiced vanilla chai tea, with some mocha/chocolate creamer.