Happy New Year!

[conuly]

Question. Why do we say "Happy NEW Year"? Why don't we say "Happy New YEAR"? The first sounds like "happy holiday", the second like "happy year", doesn't it?

Comments

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

Hm... I always said Happy New YEAR. But as I'm no native speaker, that probably doesn't count. After all, I'm influenced by German, where the stress in the equivalent phrase ("Frohes neues Jahr"> lies on the 'Jahr' (meaning year)...
Then again, there's also 'Neujahr', i.e. 'new' and 'year' pulled together to form one word. In that case, the stress is on 'Neu'... but then it's one word, so that's alright.
Hm.

[conuly]

On the subject...

All right is two words, never one.

(sorry, that's my pedantic pet peeve)

[deceptica]

Eh, I wouldn't say never. I read that "alright" has already been in use for a century, and though there are a lot of people who don't consider it correct, there are also a lot who do. Some also argue that "all right" and "alright" have two different meanings.

You can find some interesting comments on the subject here, even though the conversation went off topic quickly.

I like "alright". (So does Livejournal's spell check, by the way. Heh.)

[oloriel.livejournal.com]

My dictionary says that it's either 'all right' or 'alright', so I presumed using 'alright' was all right...
;)

[deceptica]

I say 'Happy New YEAR' too. And 'Prosit NEUjahr'. And 'Gelukkig NieuwJAAR'.