MEAT EQUALS PORK, VEGETABLE IS CABBAGE

For English speakers Chinese presents a few stumbling blocks. One of which is the implicit meaning of certain characters, unless they are there as part of a compound. For instance. the word for vegetable (菜 'choi') used by itself usually means cabbage, specifically Chinese cabbage. Whereas in compounds, it is just the vegetable suffix. So chives (韭菜 'gau choi') will read as "chive vegetable", and round Western nightmare cabbage (椰菜 'ye choi') look like "coconut cabbage".

Similarly, the default meat (肉 'yiuk') is always pork.

And a meal is always rice.

The greeting "have you eaten yet?" translates literally as "have you eaten rice or not yet" (你食咗飯未 'nei sik-jo faan mei'), in which 'jo' (咗) functions as a completed action suffix, and 'mei' (未) indicates what has not happened but is expected to occur, and probably soon.
That rice is the meal is more than implied.
Everything else is a side dish.
Called a 餸 ('song').
Or 菜 ('choi').

Song (餸) is a prepared dish that could be either meat or vegetable, or both mixed. Whereas a meat dish is called 餚 ('ngaau'), although there might be vegetables in it. No need to remember that second word, because 餸 is inclusive, to the point that one might say one is buying 'song' when one is actually going to go get some vegetables (菜 'choi').
Besides, no one uses 餚。


If someone were to ask me right now whether I had eaten dinner, I would answer in the affirmative: 食咗啦 ('sik jo laa'). Despite having had just a small quiche, which is not cooked rice (飯 'faan'), nor even a vegetable (菜 'choi'). It contains no "produce" (蔬菜 'so choi'; literally "vegetable vegetable"), and is not vegetarian (素食 'so sik'; "simple eats").

Nor is it 三餸一湯 ('saam song yat tong')。

Three side dishes, and one soup.

In which rice is implicit.




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