英语晚餐supper和dinner的区别（Dinner到底是午餐还是晚餐）

下面的回答摘自维基百科的英语原话配合翻译。

Most people in US today call the midday meal “lunch,” but about seven percent of people said they’d call the midday meal “dinner”.

如今，大多数美国人人把午餐称为“lunch”，但大约7%的人说他们会把午餐称为“dinner”。

Eight percent of people who say dinner is the biggest meal of the day no matter what time you have it or the 12 percent who say dinner takes place in a more formal setting than supper.

8%的人说“dinner”是一天中最重要的一餐，不管你什么时候吃，12%的人说“dinner”是在比晚餐更正式的场合。

The roots of the difference go back to farming culture. On farms, dinner was a heavy meal that laborers ate to sustain themselves through a long afternoon. Its use has changed with modern life, but as we’ve seen, it can still suggest a heavy evening meal, while supper can be lighter evening fare.

这种差异的根源可以追溯到农耕文化。在农场，“dinner”是工人们吃的一顿丰盛的饭，用来维持一个漫长的下午。它的使用随着现代生活的改变而改变，但正如我们所看到的，它仍然暗示着一顿丰盛的晚餐，而supper可以是简单的晚餐。

a meal—“chow”— and it turns out to have a surprising origin. It was originally used to refer to just Chinese food because apparently, Chinese people in California in the 1800s used the phrase “chow-chow” to refer to food, and that eventually got shortened to just “chow” and the meaning expanded in English to include all kinds of food.

A meal——“chow”——其起源令人惊讶。它最初被用来指中国菜，因为很明显，19世纪的加利福尼亚中国人用“chow-chow”这个短语来指代食物，最终被简称为“chow”，意思各种各样的食物。