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Why do we say “¡buenos días!” in Spanish when the pattern in languages such as English or French would suggest that it should be “¡buen día!” (“good morning!” and “bonjour!”)? Is it because we want to send good wishes for more than one day? Do we always say this or only sometimes? In this Language Bite, you will hear about why expressions like this are in the plural form.
As you can see in the Language Bite, it is a common phenomenon and you have to be aware of it or otherwise it may seem like you are translating literally from your native language.
If you think about the expressions you know, we are sure you can think of more examples like this, of phrases which are plural in Spanish but singular in your language. In the following video you can see some more of these expressions from the perspective of a native Spanish speaker.
And to wish you a good day: “que tengas un buen día“, a sentence that even uses the subjunctive, but we will save that for another Language Bite…
