Talk:Kumis

South America
This is a query: kumis is a common drink in rural Colombia. Can anyone explain the leap from Central Asia to South America?
 * I'm pretty much sure it's a different drink...

I have drunk kumis in Colombia, first I thought it was some form of ayran with a hint of sugar. But I was told that it is made from fermented milk not yogurt. And I clearly remember it was made from cow's milk. Overall, I think it is interesting to mention these facts. The following is the website of a company that produces kumis in Colombia. Just wanted to provide a link, no advertising purposes.

https://www.alpina.com.co/kumis/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.72.132.216 (talk) 02:25, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Here's a homemade recipe. Komitsuki (talk) 13:50, 4 June 2014 (UTC)

Source sought
A source is needed for the fact that Tatars created the drink first in the 13th century. I suspect the date is much earlier.
 * . You are right. Read this lamentation of a Han princess who was sent to the ruler of the Wusun between 110-105 BC, written down in the Shiji (c.123) and the Hanshu (c.96): The Wusun were nomads who lived in felt tents, ate meat and drank fermented mare's milk. Guss2 22:43, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Origin of the word
A point is missing from the article. Where does the word "kumiss" come from? It is mentioned both here and in Mongolia related article that the Mongolian term for the drink is Airag, so the name commonly used in the West does not match the one used by the people most associated with the drink. So, where was it borrowed from? --Svartalf 22:23, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Partially answered in-article now. &mdash;Bunchofgrapes (talk) 22:56, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Kumis is a turkic word, not mongolian. The oldest known language in which it was mention is a language of Karakhanids. There is a mongolian parallel though - kimur, which has a related meaning. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.46.208.138 (talk) 02:25, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

What is the source for the claim that "The word kumis derives from the Syro-Aramaic khamets ('sour, fermented') . . . . "? There are several dubious aspects to this, aside from the basic claim itself. There is no word "khamets" in Syriac or any other Aramaic language, though there are several similar words (and, besides, "ts" would not be a correct way to transcribe an Aramaic sound). "Syro-Aramaic" is not a commonly used term (except in the context of Luxenberg's book on the Koran).Linguistatlunch (talk) 19:31, 18 June 2015 (UTC)


 * You're darn tootin that unsourced etymology is bogus. It was challenged and now it's gone. Johanna-Hypatia (talk) 13:50, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

"chigee" in addition to "airag"
No doubt, "kumis" is the same as "airag" in Mongolia. But, not all Mongols call kumis airag. There is another word widely used in Western Mongolia, meaning the western part of present day Mongolia and the Mongols in Sinkiang as the classical Western Mongolia is divided. "chigee" can also mean one or two other things sometime but mainly is refered to kumiz. The words "airag" does exist in all of Mongolia but it is refered to yogurt in dialects in which kumiz is actually called "chigee".

Alway's Alcholholic?
I've drunken Kumis with both Mongols and Kazakhs in Mongolia, as well as in Xinjiang and Kazakhstan. Although once (maybe because of heavier duty distillation, or because it was mixed with vodka)I had alcoholic Kumis, most of the time it has certainly not been alcoholic--Erkin2008 06:04, 1 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Dear anonymous editor above, I recommend that you create an account! I too have developed a taste for kumis.  Although it never had any alcoholic effect on me, that is not enough to conclude that there was no alcohol in the liquid.  It might be as little as 1%, i.e. you would have to drink a litre to get 10 ml of alcohol into your system, so it might feel unnoticeable. However, the process by which it is made is one of alcoholic fermentation, and some traces of alcohol are bound to remain in the resulting product.  An interesting comparator is beer, which in Europe was for centuries the drink of choice for most people -- parents even gave it to their children -- because the water supply was impure.  Much of it was small beer, i.e. of very low alcohol content, but its production killed nasties in the water. BrainyBabe 11:02, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for responding, and now I've gotten an account.--Erkin2008 06:04, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Young kumis has no alcohol effect, but later it is strong as beer. Bogomolov.PL (talk) 15:02, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Chinese name
I drank this at a Mongolian restaurant in Beijing, China. What is the Chinese name? Badagnani 00:57, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I've just heard people say horse milk beer, 马奶酒 Maradox466 (talk) 22:39, 11 December 2016 (UTC)

Comercial availability
Is kumis commonly available in say supermarkets outside of Central Asia? For example in Hongkong, Japan, Moscow, Seattle, Buenos Aires? If so, is it imported or locally produced? --Error (talk) 21:20, 11 June 2008 (UTC)


 * I've never seen it in the US, even at places like Whole Foods Market. It doesn't have a very long shelf life so I'd think you wouldn't find it in a supermarket outside areas where people are milking horses. --Stlemur (talk) 21:28, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

As mentioned above, Colombians drink kumis and in the U.S. its possible to find Colombian kumis in stores that sell Colombian products - mostly in large cities like New York. I don't know how Colombian kumis compares to the Central Asian kumis though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.241.162.3 (talk) 03:04, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Nutritional Properties
I noticed that 92.11.172.90 took away a lot of information from the Nutritional Properties section. Would someone check whether or not he/she is an expert on the matter or just a vandal? -M.Nelson (talk) 03:32, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Proposed move to koumiss
Koumiss is the standard English spelling preferred by Oxford, Merriam-Webster, etc. I think we should move the article there. --Sonjaaa (talk) 02:34, 10 September 2009 (UTC).

Well, I agree, only not koumiss, but kumiss. Why do people always butcher English, adding their own countries' spellings? So I change the name to kumiss everywhere in the article. (unsigned), 13 November 2010.

Language is dynamic. In this case, the suggested change would be a butchery executed by English speakers of a word not commonly used in English; still, whatever the subjective judgment of merit, like or dislike is irrelevant. While not a definitive metric, Google hits (without context vetting) are far higher for 'kumis' than 'koumiss'. At the same time, Oxford and Merriam-Webster prefer the oddly warped transliteration 'koumiss'. On a pedestrian level, I've more oft encountered the food stuff in-market labeled 'kumis' (not an argument, just an observation). Topically, if the spelling convention is to be changed, it should be done through out the article (that mentioned above was, in fact, not comprehensive) and in conjunction with a page name change. Mavigogun (talk) 10:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, the English wikipedia should cater for the English reader primarily, shouldn't it? The main and maybe only sources for reference on account of word spellings are English language dictionaries. Well they may be electronic, online or in print, but they are still dictionaries, one applies and should apply first to. That's axiomatic. Now let's look at some world's biggest dictionaries. http://dictionary.reference.com, http://www.merriam-webster.com,  http://www.thefreedictionary.com give the name spelling of the word kumiss( only in one case kumis is given as an alternative spelling). The biggest ever made dictionary of the American English, viz American Heritage Dictionary 4th edition's also somehow does not register yet this alternative name kumis. You can check here- entry for kumiss http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry/kumiss. You can check other dictionaries, I think they will give the same result. So, I think it would be better to change the spelling kumis to the more correct in English as kumiss. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.147.149.91 (talk) 18:59, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose: Google hits seems to be the kicker when there are such disputes and the dictionaries are all over the place. And no one mentioned "Kumiz." But I do agree that whatever spelling is decided upon, it does need to be consistent throughout the article. However, it's not a moral issue from my end, so I say take a simple vote and see if a consensus emerges. Montanabw (talk) 02:04, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Oppose:  The above example of yet another spelling (kumiss) paired with the argument that we must slavishly adhere to some version espoused by prominent dictionaries misses the mark: language is dynamic, morphing to accommodate the speaker. Our directive indicates that we should use the spelling most likely to be submitted by users- in this case, according to my personal experience and the Google hits results, that would be 'kumis'.Mavigogun (talk) 06:04, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I have a small ween
I removed the following text:
 * 87.9% of Inner Mongolians are lactose intolerant. .

because this is really non-sequitur. Was there a point being made? Almost of Inner Mongolia's population is probably within 200 miles of Beijing, while all of the places mentioned here are Central Asia, Siberia, and Mongolia. There's a big difference. A lot of sub-Saharan Africans are lactose intolerant, but it's fairly irrelevant to an article on Kumis - a product from Central Asia. Ufwuct (talk) 18:40, 28 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I suppose it's linked because maybe Kumis works for people who are lactose intolerant. Someone could see if that's the link and do the research to see if it is true.  I happen to not care one way or the other, certainly not enough to get off my duff and look into it (grin) but if someone else does care, that's my guess as to why it was there in the first place.  Montanabw (talk) 23:34, 28 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Fake Reference Use
Reading Wikipedia is never dull, one is amused or amazed at the often misleading or outright false "information" and the supposed references cited (but of course, there are the Disclaimers, so it is not Wikipedia's fault, when someone actually believes, what Wikipedia states).

One example: Wikipedia in the Kumis article has now INVENTED a NEW GROUP of PEOPLE, the "BALTIC HUNGARIAN TRIBES".

This is what Wikipedia states under Kumis (http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kumis&oldid=509200724 ): "It was also consumed by Baltic Hungarian tribes.

Does the reference www.food-link.com actually state " Baltic Hungarian tribes"? NO - the reference DOES NOT - but Wikipedia ClAIMS, that IT DOES.

Amazed(71.137.206.248 (talk) 18:40, 15 September 2012 (UTC))


 * Fixed. Thanks for the heads-up.--Curtis Clark (talk) 20:05, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Origin of mare’s milk fermentation?
The article needs to be more clear on when and who fermented horse milk first. There is no explanation to if Herodotus’ account referred to the Scythians fermenting it. If either the Botai culture or Scythians fermented it first, that means it is not of Turkic origin. Herodotus’ account predates the first confirmed attestation of Turkic peoples by more than eight centuries. Thus it should be rewritten into a geographical origin rather than from a single culture — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:1006:B04E:66C8:D521:5205:7444:2E8C (talk) 00:46, 16 April 2022 (UTC)