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Why is this usage of tea so confusing for everybody? We re-use words all the time in English. It’s a very simple concept. Imagine if a musician asked about the key of a song and everybody was like “KEY? LIKE A CAR KEY? WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT? SONGS DONT HAVE KEYS! IVE NEVER BEEN SO CONFUSED IN MY LIFE”
Up north we say “tea” for evening meal. That’s it. Explanation sorted.
Terrible example and it’s just demonstrating that you can’t put yourself in someone else’s shoes for even a moment.
You understand that usage of tea because you used it your entire life, someone who hasn’t would rightfully be confused.
Ok it was a deliberately silly example for emphasis. Here’s a real example. I went to Australia once and in the airport somebody referred to my Mentos as “lolly”. To me, lollies are on a stick. Apparently not to aussies. It threw me off for half a second, but that’s it. Confused is an overstatement.
Yeah but the context clues are a hell of a lot easier there. You’re holding an object, and if someone called it a chupa-chupa or a sucker most people would be able to put that together pretty easily
Now imagine you’re going through stretches and someone walks in and is like “oh, playing football are you”. You could be preparing to go outside and play football… But you’re just stretching
I think most people would be confused by that unexpected second meaning of a familiar word
Imagine you are cooking a chicken. Your flatmate walks in, sees what you’re doing, and says, oh, are you making coffee?
You wouldn’t be just a little bit confused at first?
It still confuses me that I can have a cup of coffee with somebody without actually drinking coffee. (In English and my mother tongue as well.)
As a coffee drinker, if I was invited for some coffee and did not in fact get any coffee I’d be both a little confused and a little annoyed.
In Brazil, “café da manhã” (morning coffee) is the term for breakfast, but it’s often shortened to just “café.”
There was a mobile blood donation set up during Covid and I asked the group chat if it was okay to have coffee before donating, and the response was, “Yes, you should definitely be well-fed before donating blood.”
That’s pretty good!
Is the context where if you had said can i drink coffee before, it would have been less ambiguous?
Might work in Portuguese. In my original example it wouldn’t work in German. “Zusammen einen Kaffee trinking gehen” (to go drink a coffee together) still doesn’t imply that you actually drink coffee, it more implies that you just get a small thing together.
bruh because it’s confusing that a meal is named after a beverage, it’s not the double naming that’s confusing
Because we already have a word that exists for evening meal. It’s dinner. Or supper. Why call it a beverage?
Dinner comes from the French word for breakfast, literally the first meal of the day, and supper means soup. Why are they so much better?
Okay fine then I declare everything I eat at any hour of the day is now called water. But I’ll only talk that way to England folks.
Isn’t “key” for a lock like, as old as modern English?
Wait till they find out what „Gohan“ means in Japan, or „Abendbrot“ in Germany. They’re going to have a nervous breakdown.
There’s morning tea which is a light meal between breakfast and lunch.
And there’s tea time, which is dinner, and also tee time, which is a golfing thing.
And there’s also the long dark tea time of the soul, which is a book by Douglas Adams
We also say “tea” when referring to gossip.
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If you spill tea in England your head could end up on Tower Hill sans your body.
If they didn’t want to have tea, why the fuck were they making it at tea time?
Well, according to British Standard 6008 (ISO 3103), the preparation of a liquor of tea requires a tea leaf.
I don’t know why I have that knowledge in my back pocket, nor the urge to share that information, but there you go.
My guess would be via Tom Scott
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nAsrsMPftOI&pp=ygUNVG9tIHNjb3R0IHRlYQ%3D%3D&ra=m
Haha, wow! People in different cultures have different words for different things!
yes and we’re celebrating that here. it’s very human and expands people’s horizons.
It was a subtle hint to request tea be made by the person already using the oven/stove.
I suppose hot chicken broth could be considered a tea?
Careful with that kind of thinking! If you don’t watch out, you risk entering Salad Theory territory 😬
When Ringo Starr told me that a goat ate the Fat Controller’s hat for tea, I knew something was up.
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