"Mannen och kvinnan äter middag."
Translation:The man and the woman are eating dinner.
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28
Right. This shift has happened in multiple languages. When people did work involving lots of physical labor they needed to eat their largest meal of the day around noon, in the middle of the workday. Furthermore in some cases the word which used to mean breakfast has shifted to mean the meal now eaten around noon.
36
In Catalan "dinar" means lunch and I've always wondered why in English "dinner" meant dinner and not lunch. It's interesting how languages change.
1081
In English "dinner" means either the evening meal or the midday meal, depending on where you're from and what generation. It means the biggest meal, which varies culturally.
1148
Yes! Thank you. Dinner and supper are, for this Californian, interchangeable, but I know I've come across it. Supper sounds so... yummm soupy ;-) which might indicate a lighter meal! :-)
1580
Even more fun: until about 60 years ago people in the Netherlands used to eat their hot meal around noon. Probably the same happened in other western and northern European countries.
288
Middag in Dutch is still called "middag" aka noon, the time when people eat lunch. This is very confusing, especially since Middag in Swedish used to be lunch :/
1580
"The man and the woman" are two persons, so it's like "they": they are eating, the man and the woman are eating.