1 hour ago, Anna N said:It would seem in my family that the word tea to describe the evening meal is quickly being replaced by the word dinner. However, and I believe this is a well-known phenomenon, my niece who moved to Bulgaria continues to call the evening meal tea. Ex-pats keep alive traditions that have disappeared from the homeland.
Yes, I think you are correct to an extent.
Until I was 18 (so long ago!), dinner was the mid-day meal and tea the evening meal. Then I left Scotland to go to university and that all changed. "Tea" as a meal disappeared and I switched to lunch and dinner.
However, that part of my family who still remain in Scotland still have dinner at noon and tea in the evening. The practice remains strong there and across much of northern England.
I am the "ex-pat" who hasn't kept the tradition. Guess there had to be one.
Not that I ever consider myself to be an "ex-pat". That seems to be a term reserved for white people who live abroad. Non-white people in the same situation are more often "immigrants" (often assumed to be "illegal") or refugees!
I met one idiot here in China who was, I'm sorry to say, Canadian, who whined on and on about how terrible the "immigrant problem" was back home, with particular reference to Chinese emigrants. He was a second generation immigrant to Canada working here in China illegally on a tourist visa - an illegal immigrant himself! But he couldn't see it! He was caught and his visa revoked. Bye-bye!
I am an immigrant to China and far from ashamed to say so.
