What do you call the meals of the day in your dialect?

Australian beer units are confusing. When I asked for a glass of beer in Melbourne, I was given beer in what can only be described as a lady's glass; a half pint glass that would have male patrons of any British pub standing in terror with their backs against the wall should any man be seen drinking from such an item. I remember a Kiwi friend thinking it was amusing that if British men had a half pint they would immediately pour the contents into a larger glass before anyone could question their sexuality. Anyway, I made sure I specified a pint thereafter, at least until I arrived in NSW where the scuner rules.

A pound is equivalent to 454g- an amount used often for cans etc in the UK.

<<if British men had a half pint they would immediately pour the contents into a larger glass before anyone could question their sexuality.>>
Oh, this is so true!!! I've just been discussing this with some German friends, who were in a pub in the UK recently. They thought it was hilarious. As for women, though, you can usually only get away with drinking pints when you're a student.

<<I can hardly imagine they'll turn around and start offering you 500 mills or a litre, as the prol in George Orwell's _Ninteen Eighty-four_ complains about! >>
God forbid!! :-)

if British men had a half pint they would immediately pour the contents into a larger glass before anyone could question their sexuality.

So that explains those huge mugs of beer they give you in London pubs. When I was there with a friend, every pub we went into people would buys us those big mugs and we weren't even beer drinkers, usually wine. But to be polite we drank it and practically floated out of those pubs. It wasn't cold enough either but we had so much fun we didn't really care. Course I suppose all that beer didn't hurt!

<<every pub we went into people would buys us those big mugs and we weren't even beer drinkers, usually wine.>>

Wine in a pint mug- excellent! I can't say I've seen pint mugs in years, must be a southern thing. I think I've only ever been served in a mug once and that was because they'd run out of glasses- I felt live somebody's Grandad!

<<It wasn't cold enough either but we had so much fun we didn't really care.>> There's nothing like a warm beer on a cold day to keep you warm!!

Wine in a pint mug- excellent!

Oops, I wored that wrong. No it was beer in the mug. But yeah what a great idea!

We don't have meals in my dialect.

<<We don't have meals in my dialect.>>

You must be...very hungry.

<<You must be...very hungry.>>

Sure am.

Lazar,

What happened to the ''ape'' topic that was on here? It seems to have disappeared?

Breakfast = McDonalds
Lunch = Burger King
Dinner = Pizza Hut or Taco Bell
Supper = ER

I do that too - 'in the 90s' sounds much more impressive than 'in the 30s'! It was only a few years ago that supermarkets switched to kg, and I'm still not totally comfortable with it, to be honest - I find myself at the cheese counter asking for 'the equivalent of half a pound of cheddar, please'!

I can only imagine, Candy. The metric system never caught on in the states with the exception of the liquor industry, for some reason. They sell wine by the ML's and the hard stuff by the liters.

I have a couple of cookbooks from the UK and Australia and so I do keep a little conversoion chart tucked away for when I want to make recipes from those books. It always end up to be, two tablespoons plus a teaspoon and a quarter or something like that. Not so easy.

<<I have a couple of cookbooks from the UK and Australia and so I do keep a little conversion chart tucked away for when I want to make recipes from those books. It always end up to be, two tablespoons plus a teaspoon and a quarter or something like that. Not so easy.>>

Most British cookbooks usually give both metric and imperial units. I have noticed a lot of US recipes use measurements such as cups rather than the weight as most other countries use.

"Most British cookbooks usually give both metric and imperial units. I have noticed a lot of US recipes use measurements such as cups rather than the weight as most other countries use."

Yes, we use cups.

I don't know what imperial measurements are. If they're the same as we use in the US, then I think we call them the English system of measurement. Do you know?

<<I can't say I've seen pint mugs in years, must be a southern thing.>>

I've heard in Queensland they don't have beer in pints—apparently its too hot way up north there, so if they get a pint of beer it'd be too warm to drink by the time they were finished. Given I prefer the cooler climes to the south (unlike most cassowaries) and given I prefer things with a bit of flavor like (dry) cider and mead to that filth people call "beer", I've never actually confirmed that.

As for cookbooks in Australia, they often use volumes measurements too, cups and teaspoons and whatnot. Mostly straight metric, but it's not uncommon to find degrees Fahrenheit (or however the word is spelt) as well as degrees Celsius because of old uncoverted ovens. Not in kelvin though, so we aren't completely SI :) Of course, a cup here is a quarter of a litre (250 mL). I think a teaspoon is 5 mL, a tablespoon is 20 mL and a dessertspoon is 15 mL, but no-one uses dessertspoons. I think they were just invented because when we metricated, teaspoons and tablespoons were converted from the British imperial values to the nearest round metric ones, and so the three-teaspoons-to-a-tablespoon conversion was lost. I believe in Britain a tablespoon is meant to be 15 mL nowadays though... Of course, cassowaries don't do much cooking so I'm not to be considered an expert on such matters!

(BTW: I knew everything was bigger in America, apart from the States and the grasshoppers, but I never realised you bought your wine by the ML—that is, the megalitre! I'd love to see a megalitre of wine!)

Hahaha... I love Kelvins :-p. I used to deliver weather forecasts to my parents in Kelvins as a joke. *snicker*

Megalitre... good one, hah! By the same token, always abbreviate megabyte as MB and never as mB, mb, or Mb because these would be, respectively: millibyte, millibit, and megabit. Capitalisation is very, very important in the metric system. This is stressed to a limit of infinity in all modern science and maths textbooks including American ones.

Back to the original topic, I wonder whether more urban Britons call the midday meal "lunch" or "dinner". How about Scotland?