271–280 of 338 posts
It can also refer to food like lunch or dinner which the danish school system did not prepare me for in their english lessons, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_(meal)#Tea_as_the_evening_...
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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.
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Interesting! Never heard anyone use "tea" to describe the evening meal. Tea refers to the light meal at late afternoon, after lunch and before the evening meal (dinner) at my place, seems to be same as the "common" usage. BTW, Cantonese is actually a "chai language": the character 茶 (tea) reads like "char" as in charcoal, without the h sound and in a low tone.
My grandparents (Scottish) use "afternoon tea" for the light meal you describe, and the evening meal is interchangeably "tea" or "supper". Confusingly, the lunch meal is "dinner". I knew there was a heavy class difference here, but apparently there's also substantial regional difference even within the British Isles.
Now I'm really curious, because breakfast/dinner/supper is what I was taught in school, English being my second language. And I also very quickly found that it doesn't match common usage in any of the countries I've been too... but I thought that it's because of an attempt to better reflect the times of the meals in translation that backfired. Now it sounds like they were basically just teaching us English circa first third of the 20th century?
It can also refer to food like lunch or dinner which the danish school system did not prepare me for in their english lessons, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_(meal)#Tea_as_the_evening_...
In Russian, you invite people "for a cup of tea", which really just means "come be my guest", not any particular meal.
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Interesting! Never heard anyone use "tea" to describe the evening meal. Tea refers to the light meal at late afternoon, after lunch and before the evening meal (dinner) at my place, seems to be same as the "common" usage. BTW, Cantonese is actually a "chai language": the character 茶 (tea) reads like "char" as in charcoal, without the h sound and in a low tone.
What do you mean by “without the h sound” ? “Charcoal” doesn’t have an h sound as far as I can tell.
I'm confused. In Urdu and Hindi it's "chai" (rhymes with eye) not chay (rhymes with stay)
They're using an unusual transliteration. "ay" can sound like "eye" in English but it's atypical to use that in transliterations now-a-days.
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My grandparents (Scottish) use "afternoon tea" for the light meal you describe, and the evening meal is interchangeably "tea" or "supper". Confusingly, the lunch meal is "dinner". I knew there was a heavy class difference here, but apparently there's also substantial regional difference even within the British Isles.
You're the second person to say that their grand parents use breakfast/dinner/supper. Here's the other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134094 - note that the author is from US! Now I'm really curious, because breakfast/dinner/supper is what I was taught in school, English being my second language. And I also very quickly found that it doesn't match common usage in any of the countries I've been too...…
The shift over time from breakfast, dinner, and supper to breakfast, lunch, and dinner primarily reflects changing socioeconomic realities rather than some fundamental lexical shift.
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My grandparents (Scottish) use "afternoon tea" for the light meal you describe, and the evening meal is interchangeably "tea" or "supper". Confusingly, the lunch meal is "dinner". I knew there was a heavy class difference here, but apparently there's also substantial regional difference even within the British Isles.
You're the second person to say that their grand parents use breakfast/dinner/supper. Here's the other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134094 - note that the author is from US! Now I'm really curious, because breakfast/dinner/supper is what I was taught in school, English being my second language. And I also very quickly found that it doesn't match common usage in any of the countries I've been too...…
I'm no Chinese expert, so somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I've found that the Chinese word 茶 (cha) doesn't always necessarily mean tea, but can refer generically to a number of different brewed drinks. e.g. barley tea (大麥茶), ginger tea (薑茶), golden oats tea (燕麥茶), etc. all of which translate to tea, but often contain no tea leaves. It may seem like a nitpick, but when you're in China and order what you expect t…
So one thing that a lot of people, including the author of the article, may not realize is that Chinese 'dialects' aren't really dialects. They are each different languages spoken by different ethnic groups, kind of like how Spanish and Italian are different languages but still related. These different languages are called dialects mainly for political reasons, with the main one being unification. It's useful to thin…
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I have heard some people argue that "tea" refers only to things made using the plant Camellia sinensis (e.g. black tea, green tea, white tea) and everything else (e.g. rooibos) is a "tisane".
Never heard "tisane" being used by anyone. Most of the people in the US don't seem to care much about the distinction between infusions containing tea leaves and infusions that don't (when it's not just tea leaves); those who do, would often ask whether it's a caffeinated "tea" or not (infusions containing tea leaves usually contain caffeine). Personally, I prefer to use the term "herbal infusion", because it unambig…