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Originally Posted by davem
Sorry, but an English ear will pick up on subtleties of speech & terminology which a non English ear will not. You can argue about the interchangeability of lunch/dinner & dinner/supper till the cows come home. I accept that a new M-e novel which treated those terms (& others) as interchangeable would not cause a problem for non English readers. I'm just telling you that for English readers they would jar.
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Indeed, and they would also be differences Tolkien would have been acutely aware of. He was a product of the most class-conscious period of our history, and a product of one sector of that society that would be more aware of it than any other - he was part of the 'poor middle class', having a widowed mother trying to survive and maintain a genteel lifestyle on a pittance; she probably had less income than a working tradesman would at that time.
Yet another subtlety that someone not brought up in this class conscious society might not pick up on is how words can be used and mis-used for effect. If a character like Pippin breaks rank and uses dinner for lunch there's no proof in that being an indicator of his 'class' - we
know he is an upper crust young Hobbit so why would he do that? The answer is that young upper crust people often do break rank and use language outside the norm, just as the aristocracy share with the working class a liking for simple food such as bangers and mash and a love of vulgar humour, you'll often hear upper crust lads asking where the 'bogs' or 'traps' are, taking up lower class words and behaviours as a way of establishing 'difference' or eccentricity. I've no doubt Glastonbury this weekend was full of Oxbridge trustafarians, looking like crusties but in reality being the sons and daughters of lords.
But a class-
anxious middle class person would never
ever use words 'below' them - you'd never get a Sackville-Baggins using dinner for lunch unless it was a social faux pas (I'll bet they used napkin rings though
).
'Supper' is a word used by all classes, but again this has differences. Supper as used by most people refers to something you'd eat towards bedtime, a pot of tea, a bit of toast maybe. But Supper as used by higher classes is also used interchangeably with 'dinner' - maybe it should be referred to as Suppah, as that's how it's pronounced