My friend told me today the following while he was jogging on the park. We crossed each others path while jogging and he said:
"Yo dude, wish you good morning!"
I think his English is wrong?
Should it not be:
"Yo dude, wish you a good morning!"
And, which of the following is 100% perfect sentence in relation to English grammar and rules?
"I wish you good morning!"
OR
"I wish you a good morning!"
"Good morning!" is an interjection. A fixed phrase that can be used without being part of a sentence structure. You can say "Good morning!" without a subject or verb.
As part of a sentence, "I wish you a good morning" is correct.
But when running, out of breath, and so dropping words "Yo dude! Wish you good morning" is a reasonable utterance.
[as an aside, there is a humorous passage at the start of The Hobbit in which Bilbo Baggins uses "Good morning!" to mean about 5 different things at once]
The phrase "good morning" is not an interjection in this context but is a conventionally abbreviated version of "I wish that you should have a good morning", so conventional that the full phrase is never used.
So, if someone says "I wish you good morning" it would not be reasonable to see this as some kind of grammatical error. It is a, perhaps grammatically unnecessary, repetition, comparable to "I say hello to you".
I note that in spoken German, the conventional greeting at hotel breakfast tables is "Morgen". Many Brits would certainly greet acquaintances by saying "Morning" - a further compression of the conventional phrase.
When native speakers just speak they do not think about the rules of grammar. And if what they say defies such rules, then so much the wore for the 'rules'.
I wish you a good morning! is correct. The article a is used to indicate a singular member in a group. You want to wish a good morning from one specific day in a set of days one can have. Without a you should use good mornings, but I think this is a bit unusual.
