Diabetics R Us

[Bluetit1802]

It was a lovely day yesterday so I caught up with some much needed work in the garden. I have been neglecting it for quite a while. It looks like it will be much the same today, so I may get some more done.

 

[SaskiaKC]

The garden work sounds better than the housework I have planned for this rainy day, @Bluetit1802 . I have been neglecting it too. I wish you success with yours!

It is nice to see our thread coming back to life.

 

[JohnEGreen]

At the local hospital where Judith works some volunteers have set up a community garden while waiting for Judith yesterday I had a chat with one of the ladies and the idea is that anyone connected with the hospital can do a bit in the garden if they wish.
Ended up I came away with a few chili peppers picked from one of the plants they went very well in the curry we had for dinner last evening.
It's only a small plot and a bit stony but it's early days yet.

 

[JohnEGreen]

Decided to change my avatar I look a bit weird but then I am.

 

[Antje77]

That's wonderful, the little garden at the hospital!

Decided to change my avatar I look a bit weird but then I am.

There was no need to mention it, your new picture made me laugh as soon as I saw it. I think it's brilliant!

 

[SaskiaKC]

Well, hello there, @JohnEGreen !
Nice to see you -- and I love that waistcoat. I like paisley. The garden is great, too, it looks like fun. The tenants in my apartment building can have little garden plots if we want them. I think it's a great idea for the hospital to have one.

 

[Antje77]

waistcoat. I like paisley

That's 2 new words learned for me in 2 seconds. Cool!

 

[SaskiaKC]

That's 2 new words learned for me in 2 seconds. Cool!

Not to cause confusion, but I guessed at "waistcoat," which I learned from my mother, the seamstress. In the US a lot of people say "vest" but I think in the UK a vest is an undershirt.

 

[Antje77]

Not to cause confusion, but I guessed at "waistcoat," which I learned from my mother, the seamstress. In the US a lot of people say "vest" but I think in the UK a vest is an undershirt.

Oh my. I don't even know what that particular piece of clothing is called in my own language. Possibly a gilet (sounds French to me). I guess I'll just try to keep out of situations where I need a word for it.
A bit like with your utterly confusing meals. It starts with breakfast and than you get all kinds of interchangeable(?) possibilities: lunch, dinner, supper, tea. At which you can have chips, crisps or fries... Good thing many members avoid those yummy potato bits, saves me a lot of work trying to work out what they're talking about

 

[SaskiaKC]

The one that used to amuse me in French class was "petite dejeuner" (breakfast) which to me sounds like "little lunch." I think it's a cute name for breakfast (literally "break fast"). If I remember correctly, in German "lunch" was "Mittagessen" ("midday meal" which is an old-timey/Blblical English-language term).

I love words.

 

[Antje77]

I love words.

I do too
Except when I'm utterly confused as to what meal English speakers are talking about...

 

[SaskiaKC]

Here in the US it's regional and I think generational too. I grew up calling the evening meal "supper" because that is what my Northern-Southern-Midwestern mother called it; so did my Southern father. Then I moved farther South for college where almost everyone called it "dinner." So where I live, Southeast US, people have breakfast in the morning, lunch at midday, and dinner in the evening (except for a few, like me, who have supper). I think supper was originally a late meal, served long after dinner (and maybe the theatre) when some people had a light meal before bedtime.

"Lunch" was originally a short, informal word for "luncheon" which nobody says anymore unless they're being super-formal and saying "ladies' luncheon" but I think that's dying out now.

We don't have tea as a meal in America; I've read lots of English novels where tea is like a 4th meal between lunch and supper, and I think it's cool to read about an English mother telling her children to "Eat your tea." In America that would be physically impossible (unless I guess your iced tea got frozen solid!).

 

[Antje77]

We keep it simple. We have ontbijt (breakfast, and a word so ancient it's hard to recognise the origins, although they are known, as a google search just now proved), middageten or lunch, and avondeten (or diner á lá French when it's very posh).

 

[Antje77]

In the US a lot of people say "vest" but I think in the UK a vest is an undershirt.

Oh, and in the Netherlands a vest is a pullover or sweater that's divided in the front and closed with a zipper or buttons... It's a wonder we can understand eachother, isn't it!

 

[JohnEGreen]

Also depends on class middle and upper class breakfast,Lunch and dinner with late night meal being supper.
Working class breakfast, dinner and tea and maybe supper.

People used to eat at different times depending on their status and where they live.

"
.Nearly everyone agrees that breakfast is the first meal of the day. The confusion sets in after elevenses or mid-morning coffee and biscuits.
If you are a member of the lower classes or live outside London and the south-east, the midday meal is called dinner and is often the main meal of the day. But for the upper classes and metropolitans, the midday meal is called lunch and is usually quite light unless taken in a restaurant with friends or business associates.
In the evening, the lower classes and northerners come home from work, school or shopping and sit down to another fairly substantial meal called tea at about 6pm. However, the upper classes and southerners eat later and the meal they eat, called dinner, tends to be the main meal of the day.
For all classes and regions, supper usually means a late-night snack or meal, but some people use the term for the early evening meal if they have already had their dinner at midday. Afternoon tea – a pot of tea with sandwiches and cake once enjoyed by upper-class ladies of leisure – has largely died out but lives on in the form of the 4pm tea and biscuits that people of all classes enjoy."

The link below explains it all.
you may need to subscribe to read that one did not realise till I went back to it can't find any thing else as definitive at the moment..



https://www.ft.com/content/cddae7d0-552b-11db-acba-0000779e2340

The Independent has an article showing the result of a government survey on this matter.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...rits-debate-evening-meal-yougov-a8363331.html

 

[Antje77]

Also depends on class middle and upper class breakfast,Lunch and dinner with late night meal being supper.
Working class breakfast, dinner and tea and maybe supper.

People used to eat at different times depending on their status and where they live.

"
.Nearly everyone agrees that breakfast is the first meal of the day. The confusion sets in after elevenses or mid-morning coffee and biscuits.
If you are a member of the lower classes or live outside London and the south-east, the midday meal is called dinner and is often the main meal of the day. But for the upper classes and metropolitans, the midday meal is called lunch and is usually quite light unless taken in a restaurant with friends or business associates.
In the evening, the lower classes and northerners come home from work, school or shopping and sit down to another fairly substantial meal called tea at about 6pm. However, the upper classes and southerners eat later and the meal they eat, called dinner, tends to be the main meal of the day.
For all classes and regions, supper usually means a late-night snack or meal, but some people use the term for the early evening meal if they have already had their dinner at midday. Afternoon tea – a pot of tea with sandwiches and cake once enjoyed by upper-class ladies of leisure – has largely died out but lives on in the form of the 4pm tea and biscuits that people of all classes enjoy."

The link below explains it all.
you may need to subscribe to read that one did not realise till I went back to it can't find any thing else as definitive at the moment..



https://www.ft.com/content/cddae7d0-552b-11db-acba-0000779e2340

The Independent has an article showing the result of a government survey on this matter.

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...rits-debate-evening-meal-yougov-a8363331.html

I really love this kind of stuff!
Until someone posts something like 'I had my tea and my bg went real high afterwards, what could have caused it?' and you answer 'Do you take sugar in your tea?' and they reply with "No, I don't drink tea, I loathe the stuff." and they expect you to make sense of that too.

The best part of your post is that your new picture made me giggle again!

 

[SaskiaKC]

Oh, and in the Netherlands a vest is a pullover or sweater that's divided in the front and closed with a zipper or buttons... It's a wonder we can understand eachother, isn't it!

Yes, it is. And totally cool. in the US the pullover or sweater you described is called a "sweater vest."

Does "ontbitj" have anything to do with a "bite" of some kind? We might say "a bite to eat" meaning a snack or small meal.

 

[SaskiaKC]

Thanks, @JohnEGreen . I will see if I can access those links.

It interests me how sometimes the poles seem reversed between the US and England; that England's South seems to have the same sort of relationship to its North, as the US North has to its South.

Off on a slightly related tangent -- I have been watching "Blue Bloods" on TV a lot recently and all the "home and family" stuff makes New York City seem even more foreign to my experience than it did before, especially with regard to language.

So ... back to England ... what is "high tea"?

 

[SaskiaKC]

I really love this kind of stuff!
Until someone posts something like 'I had my tea and my bg went real high afterwards, what could have caused it?' and you answer 'Do you take sugar in your tea?' and they reply with "No, I don't drink tea, I loathe the stuff." and they expect you to make sense of that too.

LOL the last time I visited England I had the good fortune to stay as a guest in a friend's home. I remember being disappointed to learn that he did not like tea (and therefore there would be no lesson in how to actually brew a pot of tea). I also learned that "a coffee" meant the same thing as "a cup of coffee" or "some coffee."

Indeed we have 3 languages going here (and then regional dlalects). Cool.

 

[SaskiaKC]

... and just to complicate it further ...

"Do you take sugar in your tea?" =

"Do you put sugar in your tea?" =

"Do you like sugar in your tea?"

I read somewhere once that the English language has a huge vocabulary because it has so many different ways of saying the same thing.