Quote by DanielleX
This might seem to be a fatuous question, but I call it dinner. However, my gf insists it's called tea and says dinner is what you have in the middle of the day - but I call that lunch.
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Writing here has me fascinated with language differences, the other site I wrote for insisted on writing and spelling a la mode American. Nowadays I have my language set to Australian English though my keyboard set to US (when it gets accidently changed to UK the keyboard doesn't work proper - who knew?)
Dinner and tea I would use interchangeably, though I would say, "What's for dinner?" much more than, "What's for tea?"
Now high tea is something else of course, a few hotels do this down our way, effectively afternoon tea served between midday and three or four, three layers on a cake stand, petite sandwiches, scones with jam and cream (I am going to say more on that word) and cakes served with tea in proper china cups. Which is smeared on the scone first, the jam or cream, is its own source of debate. I confess I am totally in the 'jam first' camp.
Supper is a word I would only ever hear used for something small after say the theatre at about 10-11pm. Yet on Lush I have heard a lot of friends say supper when referring to their evening meal. Not country or class specific as far as I can tell.
The meal at noon is always lunch even if it is the main meal of the day, like Sunday lunch often is.
Back to scones. When Hannah (Palindromeredux) and I were writing Butch Cassidy and the Vegemite Kid our take on the differences between the USA and Australia, we had a hilarious debate about cookies, scones and biscuits; part of which ended up in the story. Who knew I needed translation to read stories in English.
Mind you that didn't stop me throwing the word 'doona' into a story being the Australian equivalent of duvet. And of course using 'pashing' a down under version of 'snogging,' (or kissing to for those of you who don't know either word.) I used 'fossick' in my latest competition story and was subsequently stunned to find out that it is a local word, and I had to translate for a number of readers.













