Food Terminology

If you are new to the UK, be prepared to be confused at mealtimes. Lunch, dinner, tea, supper, luncheon, which one is when?

Algeria and France

In Algeria, the main three meals are called qahwa (coffee, whether you drink it or not), ftour (for midday meal, which also designates the evening meal to break Ramadan fast!), 'acha (the evening meal, similar to the word desingating the evening prayer).

In France, they are petit déjeuner, déjeuner and dîner.

In both Algeria and France, the midday meal is the most substantial one. When I lived in France, we used to have a two-hour midday break, encompassing a two or three course meal at a restaurant, plus coffee once back at work.
The customary Friday couscous in Algeria is infallibly served at midday, just before the Friday prayer.

Germany

When I first visited BabelDad's family in Germany, I literally starved during the day. I had to sneak out for a pretend walk in the fresh air at 2pm, only to ravenously gulp down a Döner Kebab. The main meal of the day in Germany, you guessed it, is the evening one. I made up for the lack of sustenance during the day by eating huge amounts of bread and cheese at frühstück, and loads of cake in the afternoon.

Northern England

In the UK, mealtimes can get a bit confusing. Be careful when you make an appointment with a plumber at dinner time, or tea time. If you are from a southern background like mine, you would naturally think dinner time is about 8pm and tea time about 4pm. Well, you would be surprised by the plumber turning up unexpectedly at noon or 6pm instead. Dinner in these necks of the wood is the midday meal. Tea is the evening meal, which in the UK is quite early at 5.30pm to 6pm.

So what's supper? Apparently, it is another evening meal, a couple of hours later than tea, for posh people (...), or for parents who have put their children to bed and now can enjoy a child-free meal. Note: we do have family meals in our house, at 6pm, but boy do I understand those parents who forego tea with children for a quiet supper!

And if you are wondering what the English call the drink tea time, there isn't a name, because you can enjoy a cuppa any time of the day. Off to have mine in my £10 porcelain mug. Because drinking tea for me has become one of the most frequent and enjoyable activities of the day.

Scrap Greek and Latin, Teach Arabic and Urdu!

Learning a foreign language in the UK is to become compulsory from age 7. Fabulous news!

In theory.

In practice, who is going to teach them? A primary school teacher whose only claim to foreign language knowledge is French O-levels 20 years ago and a one-week excursion to Tenerife or Fuerte Ventura every now and then?

Now suppose the government can and will recruit native/fluent-speaking teachers, encourages immersion and allocates resources and time for learning languages. These are: Mandarin, French, German, Spanish, Greek and Latin.

Now, I can see the case for French and German, languages of neighbouring countries, quite common and useful for understanding English.

Mandarin and Spanish are increasingly important, due to the economic emergence of China and South America.

But Latin? Greek? One is a dead language and, no offence to Greek-speakers, the other is only spoken by 13 million people worldwide and is sadly in no risk of becoming important on the economic scene any time soon.

What about Arabic, one of the most spoken languages in the world?

And what about Urdu-Hindi? After all, minority language literacy has proven benefits on academic achievement.

I know the benefits of multilingualism, and I think I know how to go about it in practice. I am not sure the British government does...

Jubilee, Home and Nostalgia

Today is one of those days. Feeling down and sad, for no particular reason. I miss my parents, I miss home.

We went to the library this morning, in search of inspiration for BK1's poetry "assignment". In the wake of her Mysterios Poem, her teacher has asked her to write a poem on the Queen's Jubilee, and send it to the Queen. Hardly inspirational, less than Roald Dahl in any case...

Anyway, here we are in the library. A mum is telling her friend she is invited to a wedding this evening.
When was the last time I attended a wedding? My neighbour's in Algeria, two years ago.

A realisation dawns on me: My children will probably never take part in adult celebrations in the UK. We have no family here; the only celebrations we get invited to are children's birthdays.

I have vivid memories of weddings, circumcision parties, diploma celebrations and the like in my childhood: games, lamb couscous, baklava and qnidlat, traditional costumes and dresses, gold and silver jewellery, music and zerna, dancing, family crises, gossip, cousins, friendships...

My daughters are missing out on this part of culture, because neither of BabelDad nor me are home.

I wonder how this will impact on their perceptions of fun and sense of belonging somewhere. Where will home be for them?