Re: Happy New Year

Christian Weisgerber wrote:

On 2024-02-22, Ross Clark <benlizro@ihug.co.nz> wrote:

---------- it used to be more common to put A in front as
                         [A Happy New Year]
 i bet... When we go back far enough,  that was the ONLY way.

>
Yes, same with "Merry/Happy Christmas". Originally I guess it was
"I wish you a....".

Such things become more obvious in inflected languages.  For instance,
the German greeting "guten Tag!" (good day).  That's not right, that
should be "guter Tag"... but no, nobody says that.  Why is the greeting
in the accusative case?  Presumably it's shortened from a wishing
formula, as you mentioned.  In the same vein, I noticed that when
ordering in a restaurant, I also put things into the accusative
(only noticeably for the masculine singular in German).  Synchronically
that's probably just idiomatic, diachronically it must be short for
"ich hätte gerne ..." (I would like to have ...) or some such.

                  I'll see you on Monday!             Have a nice weekend!
             ¡Te veo el lunes!          ¡Que tengas un buen fin de semana!
         i think this is also the [wishing formula] -- tengas and tengan are  subjunctive (?)