Is "having my tea" a northern thing?

[Queenoftheblitz]

I'm a working class southerner. The only tea I have is in a cup with milk and sugar.
On mn a lot of posts talk about their evening meal as"tea", "what shall i make for tea" etc.
Do any southeners call it tea?

I'm southern and it's tea here.

Sometimes dinner but usually tea

if there’s gravy, it’s dinner
Problem solved

Growing up in Lancashire it was dinner and tea. Supper was maybe a biscuit and drink before bed.

I would say

Breakfast
Lunch
Tea - a meal about 5pm usually kids lighter than a dinner.
Dinner - adult or family meal about 7pm
Supper - similar sized meal to tea but eaten late in the evening.

And if anyone calls the thing they have after dinner anything other than pudding I will stave their fucking heads in.

We're as far south as you can get, pretty well, and my ds has always found it deeply embarrassing that his dad and I have supper when all his mates' parents have tea. It's a class thing, along with my posh accent (never mind that I was taught English as a MFL).

God, this will now post thrice I bet.

Anyway. Pudding leftovers.

And yes, we had guests, so two puddings.

I'm Southern and the older members of my family say "tea" too. Although most people I know would say "dinner".

Likewise, if someone said "tea-time" to me, I would assume they meant 5pm.

Pavlova and Tart au Citron.

For me evening meal is dinner if we’re going out at home it’s supper.

@Rawhh

Breakfast
Lunch
Tea - a meal about 5pm usually kids lighter than a dinner.
Dinner - adult or family meal about 7pm
Supper - similar sized meal to tea but eaten late in the evening.

Pretty much the same, breakfast, lunch, dinner. Supper is a lighter evening meal usually later in the evening perhaps if you've had a large lunch or just don't get home until late. I don't use tea ever these days, but your post reminded me that when we were children we'd have 'tea' around 6pm and mum and dad would have dinner later when dad got home from work. Mum worked too but as a nursery manager so kept school hours.

Breakfast
Lunch
Dinner
Always has been for us soft southerners
My DDIL is from Yorkshire and she’s a tea rather than dinner girl.
Confuses the GCs no end as they were born and live down south and say tea like mum.

Australian here and my family always used tea/dinner interchangeably for our evening meal. I’d never given it much thought but I’ll often say to my husband “what do you feel like for tea tonight?” and then later say “I’m going to start on dinner now”, it’s funny that I’ve never noticed it much myself but my husband knows what I mean so it mustn’t be that uncommon.

Breakfast, dinner & tea where I grew up in the Midlands.

Now in East Anglia and it seems to be more breakfast, lunch & tea here.

Supper is a bit of toast, cheese & crackers or similar in the late evening.

There is also afternoon tea of course, which I am a big fan of - sandwiches, scones, cakes, pot of Earl Grey in a nice hotel with the girls.

Breakfast, lunch, tea/dinner interchangeably

(Home Counties)

Breakfast, dinner, tea - I'm Scottish. I will say lunch and dinner instead depending who I'm talking to because otherwise people get confused.

I'm in Liverpool and we grew up saying breakfast/dinner/tea and supper was something before bed like a piece of toast.

We then moved to a much posher area than where I grew up but still in the city and it became lunch and tea and that's what I mostly use now but chop and change with lunch and dinner.

My ds calls me "posh" and I'm really not at all.
Dd is 7 and in school in an area where pretty much everyone says dinner/tea and we say lunch/dinner a lot which got confusing for a while.

We say dessert too and ive never said the word "brew" for a cup of tea in my life.

Imagine all of us lot in the same hotel?!
The poor staff wouldn't know what we meant- lunch/dinner/tea/dinner/supper all meaning different things to different people

I'm loving reading all the southerners proclaiming things to be "northern" which are merely customs and expressions of the working class.

See, a lot of people in the south think that the whole of the mysterious frozen north is working class.

Do you know Ilikeyourhairyhands ............. re

"And if anyone calls the thing they have after dinner anything other than pudding I will stave their fucking heads in."

I like the cut of your jib

IceBearRocks

Liverpool has it's own grammar as well as a most unusual accent, most of the UK if they shop in a certain supermarket call it 'ASDA', I've only heard Scousers call it 'The ASDA'.

And Liverpool BSL is again different to most other BSL used in the rest of the UK.

Supper - light meal / snack late in the evening just before bed. Hot chocolate and a snack, on a Sunday the extra YPs cooked earlier eaten cold with golden syrup.

Being in the middle county, therefore a midlander, neither one is most used. Depends who you speak too, most people flirt between using the two words.

I tend to say, yes if it’s at home and dinner if I’m going out.

I agree that supper is maybe a bit of toast before bed if you have to.
However, I put my own internal "translate" mode on and look for context. Or listen to the accent if it is heard.

In Essex here and I've used tea to describe dinner but usually I use it as a way to describe a smaller dinner or sometime a meal between lunch and dinner. Stems from my Great Nan and Nan using it (they're both cockneys) xx

It's considered working class where I live in Australia. "What are we having for tea" types tend to be the sort you'd see on Sylvania Waters and the like. They're decent types. Judy owns a hair salon, Brett is a panel beater.

Otherwise, it is always dinner here.