As a co-worker walked past me and my team mates this afternoon, he said “Bye. Have good weekends” – by which he meant that he wished each of us to have a good weekend.
Was this grammatically accurate and valid greeting in English? If not, what would be a better way to convey his message?
Was this grammatically accurate and valid greeting in English? If not, what would be a better way to convey his message?
Technically “Bye. Have good weekends” is correct in that he is wishing each individual a good weekend, using the collective noun for all of your weekends. However, colloquially this strikes me as lazy grammar. Expansions would be more like:
Bye, I hope each of you has a good weekend
Bye, I hope you all have a good weekend
The reason I would use the longer version is that it is more personal to each team member, the blanket “have good weekends” feels like more of a throw away comment such as “bye, I’m off”.
is anything grammatically wrong with the ambiguity of this statement
No one would refer to “several good weekends” in this context and so I would not say this is ambiguous, it is clear he is referring to a group of people who each will experience a weekend. There is nothing particularly wrong with the statement, it is just lazy.