29 Comments
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I wrote about the Swedish system for lunch and dinner etc here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/6176753
When is middag eaten? Dinner usually refers to the evening meal (in the US) but I have read books that refer to the midday meal as dinner.
Dinner in English has always meant the large meal of the day. Go back 100 years and dinner in North America was at midday. Now it is usually at end of afternoon. Swedes weren't thinking ahead when they named their big meal. :-)
Stupid German got me confused! Mittagessen in German is lunch so i put lunch for middag. Oops
As said elsewhere, it is logical, since Middag means "noon", as time of the day, but refer to dinner, when talking about meals.
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(native speaker) The pronunciation is often good, but not here. I am thinking about the world "Vi". If the emphasis is on the letter "i" , the word would be easier to recognize. First time I heard the sentence it sounded to me as "De äter middag".
In Midwestern-ish America, people used to (some still do) refer to lunch as 'dinner' and dinner was called 'supper', so I've been told. That's how I remember that middag means dinner.
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In England we have lunch then dinner, or dinner then tea depending where you live. Dinner is a confusing translation ..
middag is the name of the evening meal. For an explanation of why, please check Arnauti's comment at the very top.
