Why in Spanish do they say “Buenos días” instead of “Buen día”?
This is a translation of the original article in Spanish.
I got palta…
Why do we greet with “good morning (buenos días)” when we can say “good day (buen día)”?
It is obvious that when we greet we are referring to the present. With this greeting I express my wish that the other person have a good day today. In fact, this is how other languages understand it, so they consequently use the singular form. However, the Spanish language is the only one that greets in plural.
Why? There are three theories. The first theory, and the one most accepted among Spanish language academics, is that “Buenos Días” is the short version of an old greeting:
“Buenos días te de Dios.”
When someone greeted you, he or she not only did it for that day … the wish was for the following days to be good too. So, it seems people from the past were more kind. So yes, in those days, they greeted you for the present day and for those to come.
The second theory dates back to the Middle Ages, when the hours of the day were named according to the corresponding prayer: matins, lauds or vespers. Matins were prayers given before dawn. At the time of lauds people thanked God was for the beginning of the day. Vesper prayers were given late in the afternoon. Matins, laudes and vespers, they are all plural words.
The third theory is that, as good Latinos, we are intense… and we use what academics call the “expressive plural”: we put an “s” at the end of the word that we want to emphasize and thus demonstrate intensity, but not quantity:
Gracias (Thank you)
Saludos (Greetings)
Felicitaciones (Congratulations)
*Two out of three are plural in English… who says only Latinos are intense?
Now, it is true that the singular “Good morning (buen día)” is also used in Mexico, in some regions of Argentina and in several Central American countries. But the plural is widely accepted in the Spanish language and as I mentioned, it is the only language that uses the plural to greet.
How do you say “Good Morning” in your country or location? I am Nikkei, that is, my ancestors were Japanese, and among family, we still say “Ohayoo” each morning… How about you?
