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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

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.

Y_Y 9y ago
In Ireland people would traditionally have had breakfast, then dinner, then tea as the three meals. Now that only happens in the country or on Sundays.
umanwizard 9y ago
What do you mean by “without the h sound” ? “Charcoal” doesn’t have an h sound as far as I can tell.
- monort 9y ago
  They probably mean voiceless alveolar affricate, similar to "zz" in Italian pizza.
- ronyclau 9y ago
  The first syllable in charcoal reads "tʃɑ:" in IPA. I was referring to the "ʃ" sound, formally the "voiceless palato-alveolar fricative" according to Wikipedia.
  - umanwizard 9y ago
    So, a “sh” sound, right?
Bartweiss 9y ago
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.
- int_19h 9y ago
  You're the second person to say that their grandparents use breakfast/dinner/supper. Here's the other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134094 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... 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?
  - torstenvl 9y ago
    In standard American English, dinner always refers to the main meal of the day. In traditional agrarian contexts, the meals were breakfast, dinner, and a light later meal called supper. Supper is related to the word soup and is therefore similar in connotation to the North English/Scottish use of tea to refer to a later light meal by the name of one of its (potential) components. 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.
    - jessaustin 9y ago
      Fairly well-off family in the Ozarks, USA. We only say "dinner" when it's a special occasion and it isn't in the morning. For normal meals it's breakfast, lunch, supper. Most of my classmates in elementary school (many of whom had not enjoyed those "changing socioeconomic realities") were the same.
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Y_Y 9y ago

In Ireland people would traditionally have had breakfast, then dinner, then tea as the three meals. Now that only happens in the country or on Sundays.

umanwizard 9y ago

What do you mean by “without the h sound” ? “Charcoal” doesn’t have an h sound as far as I can tell.

monort 9y ago
They probably mean voiceless alveolar affricate, similar to "zz" in Italian pizza.
ronyclau 9y ago
The first syllable in charcoal reads "tʃɑ:" in IPA. I was referring to the "ʃ" sound, formally the "voiceless palato-alveolar fricative" according to Wikipedia.
- umanwizard 9y ago
  So, a “sh” sound, right?

Bartweiss 9y ago

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.

int_19h 9y ago
You're the second person to say that their grandparents use breakfast/dinner/supper. Here's the other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16134094 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... 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?
- torstenvl 9y ago
  In standard American English, dinner always refers to the main meal of the day. In traditional agrarian contexts, the meals were breakfast, dinner, and a light later meal called supper. Supper is related to the word soup and is therefore similar in connotation to the North English/Scottish use of tea to refer to a later light meal by the name of one of its (potential) components. 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.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    Fairly well-off family in the Ozarks, USA. We only say "dinner" when it's a special occasion and it isn't in the morning. For normal meals it's breakfast, lunch, supper. Most of my classmates in elementary school (many of whom had not enjoyed those "changing socioeconomic realities") were the same.
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