As in English "Good afternoon!"

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Incredible nearby. Traces of the Russian language in the English tragedies of "Shakespeare". It is enough just to carefully read the original.

What a stupid question, you might say. And you will be right. Because everyone knows that in English in the afternoon you need to speak Good afternoon. Previously, however, they still said literally Good day, but today such a greeting has remained only on the vast expanses of the Australian continent. When Australians say Good day, the rest of the English-speaking world smiles, and when this greeting sounded from the stands of the Sydney Olympics, it also cheerfully applauded. Strange, panimash, these ozzies …

However, I'm not even talking about that. Because now I am going to say something that you certainly could not expect. At the time of "Romeo and Juliet", i.e. in the 16th century, the British greeted each other with the phrase "Good afternoon." In the sense of Good den … And now in order. If you look into a good English dictionary, then the word den is sure to be found there, however, in the meaning of "den, refuge, brothel." Not a word about "day", etc. Okay, then let's find out how good den is understood by modern readers of Shakespeare's original plays. It turns out that everywhere the etymology of this greeting is deduced by bourgeois linguists to the combination Good e'en, which they see as an abbreviation for Good even, which, in their opinion, is an abbreviation for Good evening. But this is not the case! They are all wrong! Judge for yourself. The nanny sent by Juliet with a letter meets at dawn the whole merry company, led by Romeo, and says: God ye good morrow, gentlemen. What does God give you good morning mean in current English, i.e. "God bless you good morning", for morrow, which we know today by the word tomorrow, used to mean "morning". In response, Mercutio take yes and say: God ye good-den He did not make a reservation, because the nanny asks with horror: Is it good-den? And with horror because Juliet strictly ordered her to find Romeo at nine in the morning. The last doubts about what we are talking about dispels one of the most scrupulous statements that can be found in Shakespeare's works (according to attentive Shakespearean scholars), which boils down to the fact that Mercutio insists: it is Good den, since the arrow stands exactly on noon. From which we conclude that "everything is lying calendars", more precisely, etymological dictionaries, and that no den is not evening, but it is not known how our Slavic "day" got into medieval English. I don’t know about you, but after such exercises I would like to put aside my pen for a while and think about the inscrutable paths of history, which for us today are accidentally or deliberately covered with a thick fog. And who knows, maybe, indeed, even such a primordially German "year" as the English year, the German Jahr, and the Dutch jaar will turn out to be the descendants of our sun god - Yarilo … SOURCE: Website of an English tutor in Moscow