9 Comments
I put just thank you and was marked correct, but with the schön, would it be better to have a thank you very much? Does it add emphasis to the thank you, or no?
Ways to thank someone are quite idiomatic, and it usually doesn't make sense to translate word-for-word. Different people might use them differently, too.
I would translate the common ones as:
Danke! = "Thanks!" - short and informal
Danke schön = "Thank you!" - standard
Vielen Dank! = "Thank you very much!" - stronger, slightly formal
Herzlichen/Lieben/Besten Dank! = "Thank you so much!" - extra emphasis
Vielen dank! (which leads me to another question... if you don't mind, why is it vielen and not viele?)
It's an exception, actually! It's a fixed expression that doesn't follow modern-day inflection (which would cause it to be viel Dank = "much gratitude/thankfulness").
At some point in history it was inflected, and with Dank being a masculine noun the accusative adjective inflection would be -en. It is in accusative case as it's a shortening of expressions like Ich schulde dir vielen Dank ("I owe you much gratitude"). The common misconception that it means "many thanks" is not accurate, as although viele does mean "many" and is inflected, there's no plural form of Dank. The result is that the current phrase is somewhat ungrammatical, kind of like "many gratitude".
[Source: Canoo.net blog]
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I wrote: "Thanks very much" and was marked wrong. I was offered this correction: "Thank you very much."
Danke is thank you . Danke schon is thank you very much or... many thanks!
Anyone get marked wrong because they left out the Minos "-"? My example was spoken, and I had to type what I heard. I thought "Minos" was a name! Guess not! it's a dash. I thought the two clauses were comma "," delimited. What next, expectation of exclamation points!? I'm not sure if I should report this.
