Vielen dank

Vielen dank
I was thinking about this word which means “Many thanks”.
Why is there an “en” added to the word “Viel”?
I cannot find out what the grammatical reason is for this, as I would assume “Viele” would be enough to express the plural form.
 

Hallo RexV,

Vielen Dank (don't forget to capitalize Dank, since it's a noun) does translate to "many thanks" in English, but Dank isn't actually plural here, like "thanks" is in English.

If you look up the word Dank in the Leo dictionary (www.leo.org), you'll see that der Dank has "no plural." It's uncountable, like the noun "air." This means that a truly literal translation of vielen Dank would be more like "much thank" or "a lot of thank."

Vielen Dank is also in the accusative, since it's a short form of Ich schulde dir vielen Dank "I owe you many thanks." This is why there is that -en ending on vielen. You can check out Lesson 5.8 "Adjectives in the Nominative and Accusative" (https://members.rocketlanguages.com/members/german/lessons/4714) for a refresher on when an adjective needs to take an -en ending in the accusative.

I hope that this was helpful!

Tschüss!

Liss