Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Fri Nov 16, 2012 3:53 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

:NAUGHTY:
Hang on hang on hang on, you have NEVER quizzed every German you have ever spoken to on how they personally translate those words, so stop fibbing! Why on earth would you ever have done such a bizarre thing?

I do find though that practically all Germans I have spoken to who've learned English as opposed to American, have been polluted by posh southern jessy English anyway, so it's hardly a surprise if their efforts amount to trying to talk a bit posh, even though it can be very funny listening to their efforts to pronounce their "u"s as "a"s.

This.

How Germans translate their words into English is utterly irrelevant.
You couldn't translate their very literal un-nuanced mittagessen and abendessen into anything meaningful in English other than a literal, un-nuanced midday-food and evening-food.
Why are we talking about Germans? They know little about food anyway.
Except when it comes to Kaffee und Kuchen (*) ... then they are streets ahread.


(*) Which translates correctly as Coffee and Cake ... regardless of time of day, although late afternoon is best.

[Kosh]

Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Fri Nov 16, 2012 3:54 pm  

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

:NAUGHTY:
Hang on hang on hang on, you have NEVER quizzed every German you have ever spoken to on how they personally translate those words, so stop fibbing! Why on earth would you ever have done such a bizarre thing?

How could you possibly know that? Maybe it's a hobby of mine. Or perhaps I moonlight as a social historian.

Ferocious Aardvark wrote:

I do find though that practically all Germans I have spoken to who've learned English as opposed to American, have been polluted by posh southern jessy English anyway, so it's hardly a surprise if their efforts amount to trying to talk a bit posh, even though it can be very funny listening to their efforts to pronounce their "u"s as "a"s.

Germans colloquially translate mittagessen as lunch because the majority of English speech they are exposed to equates lunch with midday and dinner with evening. Which was kinda what I was saying.

If you want to dig back far enough BTW, dinner was actually breakfast. It only moved to midday (and eventually evening) as people became soft enough to need three meals a day instead of two.

Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Fri Nov 16, 2012 3:57 pm  

Kosh wrote:

... The etymology of words used to describe meals and mealtimes is actually pretty interesting. But the discussion has been about what's in general use now.

True, fair point, but let's remember that a dictionary records usage rather than defines it.
But then, the age of my dictionary rather fuxup my point there.

[Kosh]

Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Fri Nov 16, 2012 4:02 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

How Germans translate their words into English is utterly irrelevant.

Try telling that to Germans.

And it's entirely relevant to my original contention as an example of a large region of the world that describes lunch and dinner in their correct sequence.

El Barbudo wrote:

You couldn't translate their very literal un-nuanced mittagessen and abendessen into anything meaningful in English other than a literal, un-nuanced midday-food and evening-food.

Literally nobody uses literal translations in everyday speech. Literally.

El Barbudo wrote:

Why are we talking about Germans? They know little about food anyway.
Except when it comes to Kaffee und Kuchen (*) ... then they are streets ahread.

I like German food. What's not to like about lots of meat and dairy products with a liberal helping of fried potatoes? My arteries and waistline tend to disagree but I haven't listened to those spoilsports in years.

And you missed out the beer. Weissbeer and Dunkels are some of my favourite beers.

Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Fri Nov 16, 2012 4:10 pm  

That irrefutable font, Wikipedia, says ... Originally, dinner referred to the first meal of a two-meal day, a heavy meal occurring about noon, which broke the night's fast in the new day. The word is from the Old French (ca 1300) disner, meaning "breakfast", from the stem of Gallo-Romance desjunare ("to break one's fast"), from Latin dis- ("undo") + Late Latin ieiunare ("to fast"), from Latin ieiunus ("fasting, hungry").[3][4] The Spanish word "desayuno", the Romanian "dejun", and the French "déjeuner" retain this etymology (such as Portuguese "desjejum", while referring to breakfast). Eventually, the term shifted to referring to the heavy main meal of the day, even if it had been preceded by a breakfast meal.


... which mean it's breakfast anyway.


You know what, I'm leaning towards what someone posted earlier, i.e. it being the main meal, regardless of whether it's at dinnertime or teatime.
Which, of course, means that I must now exclude "lunchtime" from my vocab.
There ... it's gone.

[Kosh]

Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Fri Nov 16, 2012 4:14 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

You know what, I'm leaning towards what someone posted earlier, i.e. it being the main meal, regardless of whether it's at dinnertime or teatime.
Which, of course, means that I must now exclude "lunchtime" from my vocab.
There ... it's gone.

You're going to miss a lot of meetings. And a fair number of meals.

Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Fri Nov 16, 2012 4:20 pm  

I must admit that when I did German Literature at A-level being extremely surprised at the fact that anyone could get any sort of lyrical or nuanced qualities into literary works, but they do, although it's very different. But you've got to love the sheer practicality of German wordsmiths - don't invent a series of sounds, just knock some individual words together into compounds and that'll do. However blunt. Tell it like it is! Don't hold back! Why get clever? What's wrong with bustenhalter?

Meat? It ain't "meat", it's FLESH! (Fleisch)

Want a contraceptive? Just ask for a Schwangerschaftverhütungsmittel ("pregnancy prevention means")

And indeed the result is that they often do it better than other languages.
Which says more - Pollution? or Umweltverschmutzung ("environment filthying"). Even if you can't understand a word of German, you just know that's a Bad Thing, right?

And on occasions, we just admit we can't beat them, and adopt their creation.
Schadenfreude, anyone?

Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Sat Nov 17, 2012 10:09 am  

Neil HFC wrote:

Dinner = Main meal of day,
so

Mon - Fri => Dinner in the evening, Lunch during day
Sat/Sun => Dinner during Day => Tea in the evening.

And if you have a big breakfast and then sandwiches for the rest of the day does that mean you have dinner for breakfast?

Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:20 pm  

What about a night-shift worker eating roast beef & Yorkshires at 06.30: is that breakfast, lunch, dinner or tea?

More pertinently, does it fooking matter?

Re: Lunch ... or dinner? : Sun Nov 18, 2012 7:05 am  

Lived in various locations in and around London for 22 yrs now and it's generally accepted by those closest to me that its breakfast dinner and tea. If we go out in the evening we go out for a "meal". We often use the term Brunch at the weekend on lazy days. We have Sunday dinner for a roast meal. Or simply state we are having a "roast dinner".
That said my wife states its breakfast lunch and dinner. Though she gets stumped when I ask her who looks after the kids at school between 12pm and 1pm.
What we have to remember is that these sayings evolved in a different era when the working week was so very much different to what it is today.
But as Cody says who cares. The true English language is a evolving and fluid beast. That's its beauty. Yes it can be bastardised by Americans but equally the Australians and their shocking soaps have had an effect over the past 25 years and the list goes on.