Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea • Hacker News Board

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#261

Post by ian0 » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

rkachowski wrote: post #88

gumby wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That Wikipedia section needs a rewrite. It does mention that that usage is a class marker but then conflates it with the pastry-and-tea afternoon snack practice of upper classes. They are two radically disjoint uses. The origin of the “tea” being the term for evening meal are pretty well attested to lie the poverty of the English lower classes who could not afford much more than a cup of tea in the evening. I grew up…

I'd never heard of this before. Growing up in rural Scotland, meals were always "Breakfast", "Dinner" and "Tea". There was sometimes confusion with other people over whether dinner was a midday or evening meal, but I'd never thought much of it until now.

In farms in Ireland its typically Breakfast - Dinner - Tea. Where your main meal of the day (dinner) is around 12-1pm and the evening meal (tea) is light. Your occasional cup of tea before bed is supper.

Outside of farming people have their main meal (dinner) when they come home from their office in the evening. So the lighter meal in the afternoon becomes lunch and theres no tea.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#262

Post by tigrank » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:52 AM UTC

mdadashyan wrote: post #200

Interesting enough, in Armenian tea is pronounced as 'tey' and Armenia is surrounded by countries where tea is pronounced as "chay" - Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Iran.

Came here to say this.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#263

Post by QAPereo » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 2:52 AM UTC

Khoth wrote: post #124

_puk wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least you know where you stand with supper, right?!

Well, that depends. In Scotland, "supper" generally means "with chips".

I remember the lunches I used to have back in primary school up in Scotland; instead of having a school dinner, you used to go down to the chip shop, and their 'lunch' was a bag of chips, and you got a free potato fritter. So it was essentially a bag of chips, with a really big chip.

Frankie Boyle

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#264

Post by akkat » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 3:16 AM UTC

sorokod wrote: post #216

akkat wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Hebrew it is completely different מסעדה or mis'adah

Wouldn't this be a word made up in the early 20th century? Many Hebrew words were created pretty much from nothing at that time to revive an ancient language into modern use.

I checked and you are correct.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#265

Post by totalZero » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 3:21 AM UTC

jackbravo wrote: post #228

teh_klev wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also originally from rural Scotland (around Tomintoul), for us it was "Breakfast", "Dinner" and "Supper". Upon moving to the central belt, and ingratiating myself into more middle class circles of friends I then discovered: Breakfast - eaten usually when you get up in the morning, say early morning until ~1030am Lunch - eaten from 12pm until ~2:30pm Afternoon Tea - taken from around 3:30pm until 4:30pm (cakes/bis…

In spanish I think all countries agree on at least: desayuno (breakfast), comida (lunch), cena (dinner) as the three basic. But we also have merienda and almuerzo which get different times and portions depending on country. And there can be other terms of course. In Guadalajara, México, where I live, schools say "hora del lonche" (lunch time) to the midday meal.

Lunch is most commonly "almuerzo" in my experience, with some variation. I think there are some Europeans and perhaps pockets of Latin Americans who use "comida" to refer to either lunch or dinner as a meal, while most people use it to refer to food in general. Dinner is "merienda" in some places, while many others reserve the common "cena" for dinner and use "merienda" to refer to an afternoon snack.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#266

Post by HumanDrivenDev » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 3:28 AM UTC

jdmichal wrote: post #260

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeap you probably hit the nail on the head. I'm a native English speaker and I only know a tiny bit of Hokkien. I really struggle with the aspirated/non-aspirated aspect of many of the consonants. Not sure about the vowel sounds, I found those all reasonably trivial to distinguish. https://mkdict.net/results?query=te%CC%82&page=1&q_type=tw&r... If you click on the "+" button, there's a voice recording of how to prono…

The vowel sound definitely matches /e/. It sounds like /ai/, but there's none of the glide that would be present in a diphthong. I ran it by my wife, as she's a native Spanish and English speaker, and she agrees with /e/ over /ai/. Thanks for that link. Very cool site; reminds me of dict.leo.org for German.

The vowel sound in day is /ai/?

I can hear a slight difference between the vowel sounds in both tê and day. That's something I always just attributed to accent, not a different vowel - but I suppose vowel changes can be very subtle.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#267

Post by voidlogic » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 3:53 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #251

voidlogic wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is tons of disagreement about this stuff, as it varies so much region to region, but in general, in most English peaking places: The three meals are "Breakfast", "Lunch" and "Supper". And if Lunch or Supper is the biggest/most formal meal of the day it may be called "Dinner" instead. Hence family "Christmas Dinner" may be at lunch time, but your "Dinner party" is in the evening.

I have only encountered “supper” as the name of a primary meal in parts of the USA. I think “breakfast, lunch, dinner” likely is the most widespread formulation. I never heard “supper” in Australia or Canada at all.

Its all highly regional, but I believe my characterization is an accurate generalization. Checkout the "Word Origin and History for X" for:

1. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/supper 2. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/dinner

Interesting side note, Sup (verb) the root word for supper has been in the (old) English language since before 900 AD.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#268

Post by jdmichal » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 4:05 AM UTC

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #266

jdmichal wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vowel sound definitely matches /e/. It sounds like /ai/, but there's none of the glide that would be present in a diphthong. I ran it by my wife, as she's a native Spanish and English speaker, and she agrees with /e/ over /ai/. Thanks for that link. Very cool site; reminds me of dict.leo.org for German.

The vowel sound in day is /ai/? I can hear a slight difference between the vowel sounds in both tê and day. That's something I always just attributed to accent, not a different vowel - but I suppose vowel changes can be very subtle.

Er... No, I brain farted. The diphthong in "day" is /eɪ/. /aɪ/ (which I was listing as /ai/ on my phone) is as the word "tie".

So maybe that makes it more obvious why it would be easy to confuse /e/ and /eɪ/, especially when your native language only has the latter. Brain heuristics work regardless of whether you want them to or not, and they'll fill in the missing /ɪ/ even if it's not present.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#269

Post by DonaldFisk » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 5:05 AM UTC

clw8 wrote: post #242

HumanDrivenDev wrote: post #233

In modern Taiwanese Min Nan, "tê" sounds more like "day" than "tea". Maybe it sounded different in the Min Nan of Fujian a few hundred years ago, or something was "lost in transcription" when the dutch wrote "thee".

The Min Nan "t" is an unaspirated consonant (meaning if you hold your hand in front of your mouth when you pronounce it, you shouldn't feel the puff of air), like the t in Spanish. English speakers routinely interpret these sounds as aspirated consonants since we lack those sounds. Why Dutch writes it as thee, I don't know, since Dutch lacks aspiration. Wiktionary just said the h is faux-Greek but I don't understand…

Neither Cantonese nor Mandarin has voiced stops. In Yale and Pinyin, t is aspirated as in English "tea", d is unaspirated as in the t in English "Steve". English does have the sound, but only as an allophone of t when it's preceded by s.

Re: Tea if by sea, cha if by land: Why the world only has two words for tea

#270

Post by int_19h » Sat, Jan 13, 2018, 6:15 AM UTC

7952 wrote: post #199

philbarr wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the North of England and Scotland it's usually Breakfast, Dinner, and Tea. If you go down South it's Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner. And sometimes if you're really lucky you'll meet a Southerner who'll freak out about it, "Ha! You said 'dinner' but you meant 'lunch'!! Ha! Ha! When do you eat your lunch?! Ha Ha!!" I had an old boss that did this regularly. The dick.

We usually have one main meal, and another that is lighter and more like a snack. If you have the main meal in the middle of the day then it is called "dinner". The snack you have at the end of the afternoon is "tea". If you have the main meal at the end of the afternoon it is "dinner". The snack you eat in the middle of the day is "lunch". The difference probably depends on if you go home for a meal at mid-day or no…

It can be confusing when other languages get added to the mix, because they don't necessarily follow that convention. E.g. in Russian, you traditionally translate the main meal of the day as "dinner" in English - but it's actually eaten early in the afternoon (usually around 1pm), so it's more like lunch in that regard, and honestly should probably just be rendered as such. I often found that whenever I would refer to "dinner" in my conversation, my (native English speaking) friends would automatically assume the end-of-the-afternoon meal; and the idea of having a dinner with colleagues implies some sort of highly formal event.

On the other hand, the after-work evening meal is usually less heavy, and is rendered as "supper" in English. And, again, I find that Americans usually assume that it takes place much later than it normally does, and is also much lighter than it normally is (basically a snack rather than a proper meal), if I use that word.

So clearly there is some implicit time-of-day mapping there.