Re: Back from Christmas
| From: | Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...> |
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| Date: | Sunday, December 28, 2003, 18:13 |
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En réponse à Mark J. Reed :
>On Sun, Dec 28, 2003 at 06:22:45PM +0100, Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
> > Hallo!
> >
> > I'm back in the game.
> >
> > Greetings,
> >
> > Jörg.
>
>Welcome back!
Welcome back to Jörg too! :)
>And I'm just curious: I've noticed several German speakers using
>"greetings" as a farewell, whereas in most native varieties of English
>it can only be used as a salutation. I assume there is a cognate used
>as a farewell in German?
Not exactly German, but close enough to fit I think, in Dutch there is
"groeten" (plural, singular "groet", but just like "greetings" you don't
see the singular very often :)) ) which to me looks suspiciously like a
cognate of "greetings" and is used as a farewell. However, the *verb*
"groeten" has just the same meaning as "to greet", and there is also th
expression "doe de groeten aan...": "say hello to... (on my behalf)" in
which "groeten" is more like a salutation. Since this expression is
normally used only at the end of a letter (or a mail :)) ), this might
explain why "groeten" came to be used as a farewell.
Christophe Grandsire.
http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr
You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.
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