AIBU to ask which is the most neutral term dinner, supper or tea?

[ConfusedWife1234]

AIBU to ask which the most neutral term for dinner/supper/tea is? I am not a native speaker and I have been told that your usage of the word says a lot about ethnic ancestry, social class, if your are from the UK, US or another English speaking country, part of the country and so on. Which is the most neutral term and when do I use which one?

I'm northern but have lived all over the UK. I don't understand people's need to care about this subject. It's not the type of thing that causes any confusion. Or certainly none that can't be cleared up in a moment.

In our very normal family we say..

Breakfast
Lunch

Then for our evening meal we say any of the following.
Dinner, supper or tea

We don't distinguish between times or style of food.

If we are going out for our evening meal I think we generally use supper.

TBH. We often just say 'food' As in 'what's for food this evening'

If you really want to be clear and not risk 'offending' anyone then you could just call the evening meal the 'evening meal'

But OP you will be speaking the language correctly whatever terms you use. There is no right or wrong, just variations on a theme.

Tea/dinner interchangeable dinner if it’s a proper meal like a roast

Supper is a snack late in the evening

Schooldinners are at lunch time ds told me it’s school lunch not dinner

Lunch in the middle of the day unless you're at school then it's school dinners

Tea my kids have their tea at 5pm

When I was younger, often tea came served with a cup of tea, but, not leftover roast which was always referred to as 'dinner'.

Supper - I remember meeting a friend to see a film and she asked me back to hers for supper. I'm thinking, 'Supper, I haven't had my dinner yet'

Supper to me was a snack before bed, like Cocoa and toast. My mum always had a bowl of cereal as her 'supper'

Supper at my friends was a full on Sunday Roast !

@EnthusiasmIsDisturbed

We are of the same mind! 😁

Lunch is in the middle of the day.

Evening meal is dinner.

Supper may be used for a light evening meal if one has had a large lunch, e.g. roast on a Sunday.

Sweet/dessert/afters are considered rather working class - pudding is used by middle and upper class people.

Oh, btw, now that we are talking about different rooms... when people/the gentlemen go to a different room to smoke after they have eaten... how is this called and how is the room called? Does it differ depending on which gender those who do it have?

Does this happen anymore? I believe I would call it the 1920s. You do have some odd questions about etiquette OP.

PurpleArmy yes a cup of tea was always served with tea or a glass of milk for little children but not with a proper dinner

I still have tea with fish and chips unless in a restaurant but it’s tea I am wanting not a glass of white wine

I've just de-friended my cousin from FB because she's started posting photos of "family supper outside", "supper with friends". Once she starts talking properly again I might let her back.

I live in the south east and use lunch and dinner. The first time I heard the word supper was in a children’s home some years ago. It was a basket of crap brought out at around 9pm for children to stuff their faces with chocolate and crisps right before their bedtime and was written into policy at the time. I can never hear the word supper now without thinking of children in care. No one I know uses the word. But if I heard it I’d assume it was a snack of toast or something after the evening meal and before bed not the actual evening meal

I'm from the South West but lived first 10 years in South East.

Breakfast - morning meal
Brunch (meal at 10.30-11.30ish that's large and replaces breakfast and lunch often had if having an early evening meal)
Lunch - midday meal, but called school dinner in school.
Yes - either a drink or a cream tea/scones/cake often in a cafe
Dinner - Usual evening meal
Supper - if you've had an early dinner and have a small meal later on in the day or a late evening meal

Dessert to me is a blanket term of things to eat after main meal.
Pudding is a hot dessert

It's interesting as my family is very much working class but as we lived in an area with a lot of MC people we picked up some of the language choices.

I was brought up with breakfast, dinner and tea (north) but after university down south and a southern DP, I now use dinner / tea interchangeably, depending on who I'm with, without even really thinking about it. However, I would never now refer to the midday meal as 'dinner' - it would always be lunch (even when referring to school meals). I just asked DS11 what he would say and it's breakfast, lunch and tea for him.

There is:

Breakfast
Brunch
Elevenses
Lunch
Afternoon tea
High tea
Dinner with dessert
Supper

And then snacks.

Australian here.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are standard here. Tea is considered low class. Supper is only for those over the age of 85, and consists of a small slice of fruit cake and a cup of tea in the evening (after dinner).

DontbeaMuppet that's a pisstake, right?
Otherwise, that username...

@XiCi I May be totally wrong... but what I would expect is that some words sound nicer in some contexts, while others sound nicer in other contexts and still others sound more neutral.

I am just guessing from my native language where different classes and people from different parts of the world use different words and when they move to other contexts they do something which linguists call code-switching (I think it is called like this). They start using different words... and I assumed that this can be done in English too.

So from how I understand what people here explained to me I would use theword supper for the evening meal when talking to posh people, but when talking to middle class people I would say dinner (while for working class folks dinner is the midday meal) and when talking to working class people I would tea.

In the North of the UK I would say tea and in the South I would say dinner, in both regions supper is not the word mainly used but it is the word used only by the posh (of all regions).

As a non native speaker, I don't think you need to worry about code-switching. If you stick with breakfast, lunch and dinner, you won't go far wrong. As a PP said, confusion is unlikely due to context and would soon become apparent anyway.

I'm northern but have lived all over the UK. I don't understand people's need to care about this subject. It's not the type of thing that causes any confusion. Or certainly none that can't be cleared up in a moment.

Yes, IME most people don't know about the significance of these words, and of those that do, they find them interesting as a sociological curiosity, and aren't judging people.

Only ever heard one exception. For context, quite a lot of people I know are, like me, downwardly mobile relative to their parents and own schooling. Two or three people were sounding quite upset (I think it was about 50% hamming it up for fun, 50% serious) about their kids starting to say "toilet" (as opposed to 'loo' or 'lavatory'). All of them lived in areas traditionally considered rough, which had started gentrifying and one was on benefits long term due to disability, and all the kids were at state schools. It evidently mattered to them because these words were a way of holding on to the family background they'd come from even though economic circumstances were very different for them now.

lol I sometimes do codeswitch as a non native speaker, for example with sofa/vs. settee, jam vs. preserve, napkin vs. serviette and so on. Not sure how the English think about this.

When someone has a foreign accent, I'd think it was only connected with the resources they used to learn English, and if applicable, areas of the UK they'd lived in. It wouldn't necessarily say anything at all about their background in another country.

No, my question is more like: do the English think this is polite or do they think it is odd if a non native speaker codeswitches to adapt herself to region and social class? Because where I am from codeswitching is considered polite.

I think the dividing line for dinner vs tea in the evening must be around Stoke on Trent - I live north of that and everyone here calls it tea, including my DH who grew up here. I grew up in the South Midlands and called it dinner.
Relatives who are English-speaking but not British call the evening meal supper all the time, relatives who are English and from the south and posh call it dinner and have it around 7, though if they are trying to appear young/casual (we're talking my aunts in their 60s/70s though!) they might ask someone over for "supper".

Confused I've noticed that those new to the UK who didn't really learn English before they came, just learn the local words and don't fret too much about whether they are posh/local/correct (and it can sound a little funny to hear a blend of a strong Northern and a strong Arabic accent for example!), if you do switch it probably shows your English was good before you came and you're actually thinking about it so people will probably be impressed!

I would say changing the word you use to adapt to your perceived social class of the person you're speaking to would be quite impolite and rather condescending.

Hmm I'm not sure anyone says preserve much... and napkin is the 'posh' version as opposed to serviette. I think it is linguistically very interesting but that nobody, even the poshest of people, would consider a native speaker impolite for using the less posh alternative.