We’ve seen before on OffQc that the three meals of the day in Québec are called:
- le déjeuner, breakfast
- le dîner, lunch
- le souper, supper
On the radio, though, here’s what the host said to us listeners:
C’est l’heure du lunch qui s’en vient bientôt.
Lunchtime’s coming up.
That’s lunch’s second name in Québec: le lunch.
A reader of OffQc liked this Québecois usage: la boîte à lunch, which she found in this newspaper article online. The article is called Suggestions pour la boîte à lunch, and contains suggestions of lunches kids can take to school. You can say un sac à lunch if it’s a bag.
There’s another meal that could be added to this list: le brunch. It’s a meal that occurs between breakfast + lunch.
In advertising especially, you might notice the typically Québécois terms are sometimes not used. Here’s what’s on the back cover of an Ikea catalogue that showed up in my mailbox:
Petit-déjeuner au lit… comme ça, sans raison.
Breakfast in bed… just because.
Rather than calling breakfast in bed déjeuner au lit like they did in this TVA article, the Ikea magazine uses petit-déjeuner au lit.
Here’s how the TVA article used déjeuner au lit:
Vous cherchez à gâter maman à l’occasion de la fête des mères? Pourquoi ne pas lui préparer un décadent déjeuner au lit pour débuter sa journée en beauté?
Want to spoil Mother on Mother’s Day? Why not make her a decadent breakfast in bed so she can get her day off to a great start?
How do you say things like to have breakfast, to have supper, etc.? You can use the verb forms of the words (dîner, souper…). In #451, we saw:
Vous avez pas encore soupé.
You haven’t had supper yet.
Ça vous dérange pas qu’ils soupent avec nous?
Is it okay if they stay for supper? have supper with us?
You can also say things like aller souper, aller dîner, aller bruncher, etc. In #991, we saw:
aller souper au restaurant
to go out for supper
