Greetings

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Permalink Reply by Marc Vonhalmen on December 21, 2009 at 9:43pm

Je souhaite à tout le monde un joyeux Noël et une bonne année. ("Joyeux Noël et une Bonne année" (with capital letters) would also be acceptable, but is technically incorrect, and yet very common).

Je vous souhaite un joyeux Noël et une bonne année. (same remark as above)

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Permalink Reply by Crack1 on December 21, 2009 at 10:03pm

Thanks Marc
In English people write New Year but I don't think there is any mistake in writing 'new year'.

In English we capitalize the proper nouns. That is why to write 'marc' or 'switzerland' is wrong.

It should be Marc or Switzerland.

The New Year is a great event for many of us. So we highlight it by writing New Year.

When it comes to greetings it is not new year. It is New Year.

People have high expectations in the new year. NO GREETINGS

The Second Word War was a great event. So we don't write the second world war.

It is always the Second World War.

By the way, I would like to know about the flaw in writing 'Bonne année'.

I may be wrong here. I have learnt from others. There may be people who disagree with me.

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Permalink Reply by Marc Vonhalmen on December 21, 2009 at 10:38pm

Yes, as I said, writing "Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année" is also very common in French, when it comes to greetings, and yet it's technically incorrect. But I always write it with capital letters, just as most people do.

Important events as WW1 and WW2 are also capitalized in French: la Première Guerre mondiale, la Seconde Guerre mondiale.

There are other examples of words or events that are (and should be!) written with capital letters, but "Joyeux Noël" and "Bonne Année" are not, even if we often write them like this.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on December 21, 2009 at 11:03pm

Different languages have different orthographical conventions. In English, there's more of a convention of capitalising titles and phrases than in French, where the convention is generally to capitalis the first "content" word of the phrase.

However, it's a free world. If you want to capitalise a phrase or if you want to not use capitals at all, it's really up to you.

I have to confess I find statements like "technically incorrect" a bit odd without clarification. Orthography is just an invented system; there's no such thing as "correctness" from an absolute point of view. If a particular set of conventions dictates a particular rule of capitalisation, something is only "technically correct" or "technically incorrect" inasfar as you were attempting to follow that particular convention.

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on December 21, 2009 at 10:01pm

Remember you only put the object before the verb when it's a "pronoun" (me, te, nous etc). If you're "spelling out" who the person is ("Marie", "mes enfants", "mon ami", "tout le monde" etc), then it goes after the verb.

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