Tea time or snack
I think there are three types of meals: breakfast, lunch and dinner. But, I would like to know how you say "merienda". I mean, that meal that is at five o'clock. I am not sure if it is tea time or there is another name for that.
I would like to know your answers. Thank you.
4 Answers
In the U.S. when we eat in between meals we say "It's snack time." At work it would be called "break time."
"I'm having a snack."
"Would you like a snack?"
I believe that "tea time" is from England.
Hi Nila
Years ago this was I believe called afternoon tea but I don´t think this is used any more. People where I live are normally having their dinner around 6 o' clock so I suspect they wouldn't be eating anything else around that time.
Generally we have Breakfast, Lunch and then Dinner.
The thing is, people don't really eat this merienda in the US, because dinner widely eaten much earlier, so we don't have a perfect word for it. The closest thing I can think of is afternoon tea, but that occurs almost exclusively outside the US. The reason I would shy away from calling it 'snack time' is because a snack in the US is something that at least I think of as distinctly not a meal, not even a small one. Ambling through the kitchen and picking at the leftovers is a snack; grabbing a granola bar on the way out the door is a snack; shoveling pop-corn into your mouth in front of the television is a snack. Though I can imagine children being rounded up and sitting down to a snack around a table, it is not something that the family or guests assemble for and eat in an organized fashion. A snack is unplanned.
Anyway, I think the best thing to call merienda in English is probably 'tea and munchies'. (Munchies are little things you put out when guests come over that are traditionally finger food--grapes, cheese and crackers, hummus, etc.--that tide people over during drinks before a dinner later on). At least, that's my impression of these words; I suppose snacking vocabulary and associations is fairly subjective and varies according to one's eating habits.
As MacFadden mentions above, the real answer to this is that we don't really have a merienda in any English-speaking countries, insofar as I am aware. The main cultural difference here is that we dine much earlier than in Spain, for instance. Rather than eating at perhaps 10pm, most people in the UK and Ireland would have their evening meal anywhere between 6pm and 7.30-8.00pm.
Quite often we do have "tea" in the afternoon, however. For many adults, this will just be the equivalent of the mid-morning tea/coffee break, with a beverage and a couple of biscuits or a snack-bar. For families with young children, the situation varies. For very young children, this "teatime" will be the main evening meal, as they cannot make it through to dinnertime. For families with older children, it may be a sandwich or cheese and crackers with fruit, or it may something like a bowl of pasta,or it may just be a drink and biscuits or a snack-bar. It can vary hugely from one home to the next.
All in all, I would use "tea" as the nearest equivalent of "merienda".
