Path: ...!news.nobody.at!weretis.net!feeder8.news.weretis.net!news.szaf.org!inka.de!mips.inka.de!.POSTED.localhost!not-for-mail From: Christian Weisgerber Newsgroups: sci.lang Subject: Re: Official German spelling update Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2024 14:55:55 -0000 (UTC) Message-ID: References: <87o77158s5.fsf@parhasard.net> Injection-Date: Sun, 14 Jul 2024 14:55:55 -0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: lorvorc.mips.inka.de; posting-host="localhost:::1"; logging-data="65059"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@mips.inka.de" User-Agent: slrn/1.0.3 (FreeBSD) Bytes: 1611 Lines: 17 On 2024-07-14, Antonio Marques 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