Submitted by jamescookenotthatone t3_127hmlf in todayilearned
If you're in the American Midwest you learn that some rural areas have breakfast, dinner, and supper as their 3 meals rather than breakfast, lunch, and dinner, because like it says in the article, "dinner" was the name of the largest meal of the day regardless of time. Rural, heavily German areas tend to be breakfast, dinner, supper.
Same in the Southeastern US. My older relatives in NC and SC say breakfast, dinner, supper. There was significant German settlement in central SC in colonial times, so maybe that's where it came from.
Grew up in coastal NC and it was usually breakfast>lunch>dinner. Especially since at school theres a big emphasis on "lunch" though people might say supper instead of dinner, was still usually the biggest meal at the end of the day. The area was settled by a lot of english settlers, and some of them on this isolated island basically kept their accents to this day. Bit of a trip to hear.
Coastal SC and GA accents are like that too
Not gonna lie, it took me a while to be able to understand some of the older crowd around here, lol. Especially when they speak at a fast pace. The older folk from Down East/Harker's Island have the heaviest accents that I've heard. Had a few teachers growing up from there and it was a bit interesting at times haha.
When I studied in Germany, many people still eat the largest meal as lunch. The last meal of the day they called the evening bread.
The cafeteria lunches were gigantic and awesome, but I mostly lived off doner kebab.
not to confuse with evening red!
My dad uses that terminology and it drives the rest of my family nuts.
Not so much just using the term "supper" even though I do think that's an odd term, but using "dinner" to mean the meal the rest of us call lunch.
It's made worse because sometimes dinner means dinner with Dad but sometimes it means lunch.
When I still lived at home we had a few incidents where this confusion ruined plans, so every time we're making meal plans, I will ask him now "midday meal or evening meal, dad?".
My mom’s side of the family all does the same. They use dinner to describe a large meal, typically eaten as a family or group. Dinner can be served anytime between 11am and 7pm depending on the setting and details.
What about elevensies?
My parents were both raised in Czech households, and we called them breakfast, lunch, and supper. My wife's family called them breakfast, lunch and dinner. She finally broke my spirit and I know call supper, dinner.
Same in Newfoundland and Labrador up in Canada. It's a running joke in my family as my stepdad is a Newfie and refers to lunch as dinner, while we refer to supper as dinner/supper interchangeably
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