Throughout the world, there are two main types of pronunciation of the word “tea”: “ti” and “chay”.  Let’s find out why. As you know, the homeland of tea is China, where it was used as a medicine 3000 years ago.  In most of China, Mandarin and Cantonese are spoken and tea is called “cha” there.  Only in the Amo dialect of southeastern China, the drink is called “te”. In the countries where tea arrived by land, including the Great Silk Road, this is how “cha”, “chai” is pronounced. And in the countries that conducted trade relations with China along the sea route, they are called “te”, “ti”, “tei”.