another food question: 菜 飯 餐

[goldie]

ok, i'm obsessed with food right now. help me out here, how does one differentiate between these three terms? see following examples.

菜 on it's own refers to vegetables, but can also refer to food.

飯 on it's own refers to cooked rice, but can also refer to food.

餐 on it's own refers to meals, but can refer to other things.

so, i can say: 你喜歡吃什麼菜？answer could be anything like 中國菜 or 意大利菜. you couldn't say 你喜歡吃什麼飯, or at least, i don't hear it very often. what you can say however is: 你吃飯了嗎？ but NOT 你吃菜了嗎?

next, you could say : 你喜歡吃中餐 or 西餐? but you couldn't use either 菜 or 飯 in that question. You can have 早餐,中餐 or wan3餐 as well as 早飯, 中飯, and wan3飯, but not using 菜.

Finally, you have 餐廳 and 餐館 for restaurant. 飯店 and 飯館 for hotel. but not 菜.

I know how to use them, but I don't know how to explain the differences to my students.

Any ideas?

thanks, goldie

[liande]

I feel that it helps to realize, that Chinese eat mainly rice (i.e. fan) which is (on lucky days) decorated with a little bit of cooked veggie (i.e. cai). So anything that would be cooked by a chef and not by a rice ayi is cai, whereas rice can sometimes include the little veggies, thus generating the word for food (fan). Chi fan le ma? is an expression from times where there wasn't a lot to eat, and therefore one would have been very happy even without cai.. "Can" contains the notion of having food and sitting down around a table to have it.

[peterwelm]

如果是餐，那么肯定包含饭和菜。中国人的饮食，特别是南方人，一般每餐（指一日三餐）都会吃米饭(北方人就不一定了，他们通常更爱吃面食)，而且还要做菜。所以，说“餐”就意谓着肯定是既有“饭”又有“菜”。

上面说法中的内容都是名词的用法，而“餐”和“饭”两个字还有动词的意义：都是指吃、吃饭的动作。

[Sophia_Shang]

In China, there's nobody can bearly eat cooked rice(饭/飯) without cai, so cai and fan mean all the same in many fields, just the meaning of 'food'.

'Cai' doesn't only mean 'vegetables' in Modern Chinese when you're talking about foods, it also includes meat. To express 'vegetables', you can use “蔬菜”，“素菜”or“斋/齋”, to be more grace.

'Can' is a graceful expression of 'food' or 'meal', it is a written language, not commonly used by native speakers. But it is very common in ancient Chinese, for example: 彼君子兮，不素餐兮。──《诗·魏风·伐檀》

令人惭漂母，三谢不能餐。（李白诗）(Here 'can' acts as a verb)

'Can' partly survived the time and still can be seen in many idoms（成语）, for example, “一日三餐”(daily food) and“尸位素餐”.

and, “餐馆”,“菜馆”and“饭馆”are all acceptable and widely used among Chinese, there are only very slight differences between them: “菜馆”are usually smaller than“饭馆”, and the latter one are usually smaller than“餐馆”.

[goldie]

朋友們感謝你的指教, i think i can explain these differences better now.