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From: Christian Weisgerber <naddy@mips.inka.de>
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Official German spelling update
Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2024 14:55:55 -0000 (UTC)
Message-ID: <slrnv97pnr.1vh2.naddy@lorvorc.mips.inka.de>
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On 2024-07-14, Antonio Marques <no_email@invalid.invalid> wrote:

> Could you break down _Vielen Dank_ grammatically for us?

It literally means "many thanks".  Whereas the English noun only
exists in the plural (no such thing as expressing "a thank"), the
German one is a mass noun without plural, so the expression is in
the singular.  "Dank" is a masculine noun, so the -en agreement
indicates that the noun phrase is in the accusative case.  Clearly
it has been extracted from a sentence like "ich schulde Ihnen vielen
Dank" (I owe you many thanks) or such, but nowadays it's a fixed
expression.

Compare "guten Tag!", which is also an elliptical expression in the
accusative case.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de