While coffee is a “must” for many, tea is also a beverage that has left its mark on the lifestyles of Malaysians.

Ranging from “teh tarik” to iced lemon tea to bubble tea, there is no shortage of teas that Malaysians enjoy at all times of the day.

Tea is theorised to have originated from China, and Chinese myth tells of a time that Shennong, the Divine Farmer, was saved from poisoning by a tea leaf.

Unsurprisingly, tea remains highly regarded in Chinese culture, being cultivated in China some 6,000 years ago.

It did however only make the transition from food to drink about 1,500 years ago when it was discovered that mixing tea leaves with hot water created a tasteful beverage.

For hundreds of years afterwards, tea would be grounded into powder and mixed with hot water to make muo cha, or matcha in Japanese.

The Chinese tea culture has revolved around the drink, with poets and authors writing about it and emperors happily lapping it up.

Tea began seeping out of China and across the borders of its neighbours’ territories, where it would go on to be distributed even further and out of the continent of Asia itself.

Eventually, tea shipments began to arrive in the West and was soon elevated to luxury goods status, eventually driving Western powers to compete for the monopoly of the tea trade.

Interestingly enough, there are two completely different words to refer to “tea”, and it depends on how the tea itself is transported.

In China and Korea, tea is called “cha” and in Japan, “ocha”.

In Hindi, Persian, Russian and Turkish, it’s “chay” and in Arabic, “shay”.

You obviously know the English name “tea”, but other languages have similar sounding names such as the Dutch “thee”, the Malay “teh”, the French “the” and the Italian “te”.

So what is the cause of these lingual differences?

It can be safely assumed that the variants of “cha” was the result of the Chinese name being passed around through trade between China and its trading partners.

But what about “tea”?

Tea was not native to Europe, so where did the term come from?

In the coastal Chinese province of Fujian, the Min Nan dialect’s word for tea is not “cha”, but rather “te”.

It is likely that European traders, when picking up tea shipments from this province, adopted the name of “te” and brought it back home with them where it caught on and stuck.

There are exceptions to the rule however, as regions where tea naturally grows can sometimes have their own names for tea, such as the Burmese who call it “laphak”.

After water, tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world.

With a variety of preparation methods, there is no shortage of ways to enjoy a cup of tea, or whatever you want to call it.