Local Drinks

1. བོད་ཇ།

   Bö ja

   Butter tea

   Usage

   The Tibetan drink made from tea leaves and yak or cow butter. Named for the method it is ja sub-ma, churned tea, while Ü-Tsang says böja; Bhutan calls it suja and Ladakh and Kashmir gur gur cha. It is salted, so it will surprise anyone expecting a sweet tea

2. ཇ།

   Ja

   Tea

   Usage

   The bare word for tea, borrowed from Chinese and shared in the same shape by other Tibetic languages such as Dzongkha. It is the superordinate term covering butter tea and black tea alike, so use it when you do not want to specify a kind

3. ཇ་དྭངས།

   Ja dang

   Plain tea (tea without butter)

   Usage

   Listed first among everyday drinks, with the alternative names ja kha and ja nak. Dang means "clear": tea served without butter. Note that in modern writing the same word is also used for the antioxidants in tea, so use it where the context is clearly a drink

4. ཛཱ་ཇ།

   Dza ja

   Nutmeg butter tea

   Usage

   Tea liquor churned with butter, a little tsampa and a measured amount of nutmeg, and regarded as restorative. It is treated as closer to a tonic than ordinary butter tea

5. ཇ་བག

   Ja bag

   Brick tea

   Usage

   Butter tea starts by shaving and boiling one of these tea bricks. This, rather than a packet of leaves, is the form you see stacked in markets and souvenir shops

6. དར་བ།

   Dar wa

   Buttermilk

   Usage

   The milk left after churning butter (buttermilk). A variant is dara, and the colloquial form is also used

7. ཁ་ཕེ།

   Kha phe

   Coffee

   Usage

   Borrowed from Chinese kāfēi. Other forms exist: khophi (from English "coffee"), ja kop-pi and tshig ja, literally "burnt tea." Which one lands depends on the speaker's generation and region, so be ready to swap

8. ཆུ་མངར་མོ།

   Chu ngar mo

   Sweet drink, soda

   Usage

   Chu (water) plus ngarmo (sweet). It means a sweet drink, especially a soda. Useful when you want something sweet and fizzy without naming a brand

9. ཁུ་ནག

   Khu nag

   Cola

   Usage

   It means "cola" and is literally "black sauce" — a name built from Tibetan words rather than borrowed

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