[ronyclau]

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]

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.

[Bartweiss]

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]

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 - 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]

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]

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.

[torstenvl]

I feel like you're conflating "traditional agrarian" with "rural." I also feel like you're conflating "changing socioeconomic realities" with "people getting rich or well-off."

Was your elementary school in a one-room schoolhouse? Did most people go home for the mid-day meal? Was school in session through the summer and winter with breaks for the planting season and the harvest? Did most people stop going after 6th, 7th, or 8th grade? If not, then I feel like your post may be non-responsive to mine.

[jessaustin]

Yes I probably misunderstood you, because I have no idea what you meant by "standard American English". I'm an American and I speak English, and my rural neighbors are the same, so I thought I would report my observations. Around here we rarely use the word "dinner" for meals eaten in one's own home.

[ScottBurson]

I think breakfast/dinner/supper was standard usage among my extended family in Alabama -- I have to say "was" because I haven't been there since the early 1970s, but I wouldn't be surprised if it hadn't changed.

[umanwizard]

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

[monort]

They probably mean voiceless alveolar affricate, similar to "zz" in Italian pizza.

[ronyclau]

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]

So, a “sh” sound, right?