It feels as if "hello" is fading out again. It was never completely universal. Where I grew up, people still say "aye aye" (not on a ship btw), along with the usual "good whatever".
I did once read a Christian complaining about it because it had the word "Hell" in it. A minority opinion of course.
One advantage of using hello as a greeting is that it is agnostic of social rank. This made it the perfect choice for greeting people of unknown social rank on the phone.
Having traveled the world quite a bit I can attest to the ubiquity of the word hello… almost everywhere I go it is understood. ‘OK’ has a similar ubiquity, and it is interesting that both words are relatively new additions to the English (universal?) language.
The article should have mentioned the Japanese phone greeting of Moshi Moshi. Which I think means I’m going to speak now. Which I think has a wonderful respect for stillness or quiet.
> Greek, meanwhile, uses "Γειά σου" (pronounced "yah-soo") as a typical informal greeting, offering a wish for health rather than a simple salutation.
Ironically, the root of "salutation" in latin is "salutare," to wish good health.
> According to linguists, elongated variations such as "heyyy" could be construed as flirtatious, "hellaw" might suggest you're from the southern US, "howdy" from western US, and the clipped "hi" may indicate a curt disposition.
Surely "howdy" derives from "how do you do?" and not "hello."
>Surely "howdy" derives from "how do you do?" and not "hello."
It seems most likely but the OED (at least in the second edition) says:
>[Note. The conjectured derivation from the phrase how d'ye? is impossible, since the Sc. form would then have been (huːdɪ). On the analogy of Sc. gowdie = goldy, howdy might go back to holdie, an appellative (like brownie, etc.) from hold, friendly, benevolent, kind: cf. F. sage-femme.]
But the OED has many oddities regarding American vernacular and I personally take it with a grain of salt when it comes to this area. It's only definition for "howdy" is as an alternative spelling for "howdie," a midwife and ignores the common US idea of it being "how do you do," but it does include a "see how d'ye" where it includes "howdy" and various other spellings for the sentiment of "how do you do."
Back in the 80's, I'd call my best friend and when his Dad would answer, he would say, "yello".
Is this a North Eastern thing? His family was from Pennsylvania.
In japanese there is ヤッホ (Yahho~) which might be related to english "Yoo-hoo". Apparently this comes from dutch "joehoe". I've also seen etymology sources list "yoo-hoo" coming from sailing jargon "yo-ho", but these might all be related.
In the article this is not too far from "Γειά σου" (yah-soo) and the supposed root as a ferryman hail (halâ). So I guess the "yoohoo" branch of greetings might in fact be related, or otherwise it's an independent rederivation with two common and similar sounds ("yo"/"ho").
"Yello" might probably be a cute combination of yoohoo and hello. Or you could go all the way with Yahallo~.
> According to linguists, elongated variations [of hello] such as "heyyy" ...
Not to be confused with the vocative interjection "Hey" which is likely thousands of years old, at least back to Proto Indo European, but probably earlier.
Kind of like you might say 'your humble servant' in English, the Venetians would say "sciavo vostro". Literally "your slave" - schiavo vostro in modern Italian. Which then morphed into "ciao".
At least in Alsace we sometime use "service" as a "you're welcome" equivalent instead of the more widespread "de rien", or "avec plaisir" you will ear in France.
I wonder how many non-English speaking countries adopted hello as the default phone greeting. In Russian "allo" is used, which is pretty clearly traced to Edison's hello.
On the other hand, my US-born teenage kids don't seem to be continuing this grand tradition, presumably due to most peer communication happening over text. When called, they just pick up the phone and wait for the caller to speak first. If I stay silent as well, I get an annoyed "yes?" eventually. My lessons in phone etiquette have gone unheeded.
You know why this is, right? Most phone calls these days are spam or otherwise annoyances. Many are literally just seeing if a person picks up. They’re listening to see if you’re a real human being.
To be fair, the origins of "hello" go back much further than 600 years. Variations of it appear in Old Icelandic from almost 1000 years ago, and if you look at Old English texts from hundreds of years before that you will find greetings such as "Wes þū hāl!" (or roughly, "May you be well!"). In other words, all are based on salutations which have most likely been in use in one form or another for at least two millenia (if not longer).
Random geek thing: Apple has used a couple different versions of its iconic "hello" image originally drawn by Susan Kare.
The first one starts with an "h" that has a loop at the top, the second doesn't. If you do an image search [1], you'll see the two versions. Both have been used in advertising over the years, both in print and in TV commercials.
Susan Kare sells a signed "hello" print on her website and I bought one - it uses the second version [2]. When Apple started their advertising campaign a few years ago using the original curlicue "hello" again, I looked at the print on my wall, and noticed the difference.
I emailed Susan about it and she responded that she hadn't even noticed! She couldn't remember anything about why there were the two versions. My Occam's razor guess is that Apple had recreated the original "hello" at some point and the designer decided to skip the loop. When Susan was making the prints years ago, she looked for a nice high resolution copy of it, and Apple hadn't made the curlicue version of it "official" yet, so the second was the nicest copy out there.
(If you look carefully, there's also a "hello" print ad from the 80s that looks like someone at an ad agency just took a go at it.)
> The most commonly cited etymology is the Old High German "halâ" – a cry historically used to hail a ferryman.
To this day there's a ferry and company called Hal över ("take me across" in the local dialect, "Hol rüber" in standard German) https://www.hal-oever.de/de/home/ in Bremen, Northern Germany
30 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 55.1 ms ] threadI did once read a Christian complaining about it because it had the word "Hell" in it. A minority opinion of course.
Having traveled the world quite a bit I can attest to the ubiquity of the word hello… almost everywhere I go it is understood. ‘OK’ has a similar ubiquity, and it is interesting that both words are relatively new additions to the English (universal?) language.
Ironically, the root of "salutation" in latin is "salutare," to wish good health.
> According to linguists, elongated variations such as "heyyy" could be construed as flirtatious, "hellaw" might suggest you're from the southern US, "howdy" from western US, and the clipped "hi" may indicate a curt disposition.
Surely "howdy" derives from "how do you do?" and not "hello."
It seems most likely but the OED (at least in the second edition) says:
>[Note. The conjectured derivation from the phrase how d'ye? is impossible, since the Sc. form would then have been (huːdɪ). On the analogy of Sc. gowdie = goldy, howdy might go back to holdie, an appellative (like brownie, etc.) from hold, friendly, benevolent, kind: cf. F. sage-femme.]
But the OED has many oddities regarding American vernacular and I personally take it with a grain of salt when it comes to this area. It's only definition for "howdy" is as an alternative spelling for "howdie," a midwife and ignores the common US idea of it being "how do you do," but it does include a "see how d'ye" where it includes "howdy" and various other spellings for the sentiment of "how do you do."
In the article this is not too far from "Γειά σου" (yah-soo) and the supposed root as a ferryman hail (halâ). So I guess the "yoohoo" branch of greetings might in fact be related, or otherwise it's an independent rederivation with two common and similar sounds ("yo"/"ho").
"Yello" might probably be a cute combination of yoohoo and hello. Or you could go all the way with Yahallo~.
I am from the Southern US and I am definitely not familiar with this phonetic form. Could be what a BBC writer _imagines_ a Southerner sounds like
Not to be confused with the vocative interjection "Hey" which is likely thousands of years old, at least back to Proto Indo European, but probably earlier.
Kind of like you might say 'your humble servant' in English, the Venetians would say "sciavo vostro". Literally "your slave" - schiavo vostro in modern Italian. Which then morphed into "ciao".
On the other hand, my US-born teenage kids don't seem to be continuing this grand tradition, presumably due to most peer communication happening over text. When called, they just pick up the phone and wait for the caller to speak first. If I stay silent as well, I get an annoyed "yes?" eventually. My lessons in phone etiquette have gone unheeded.
You know why this is, right? Most phone calls these days are spam or otherwise annoyances. Many are literally just seeing if a person picks up. They’re listening to see if you’re a real human being.
The phone system is FUBAR.
The first one starts with an "h" that has a loop at the top, the second doesn't. If you do an image search [1], you'll see the two versions. Both have been used in advertising over the years, both in print and in TV commercials.
Susan Kare sells a signed "hello" print on her website and I bought one - it uses the second version [2]. When Apple started their advertising campaign a few years ago using the original curlicue "hello" again, I looked at the print on my wall, and noticed the difference.
I emailed Susan about it and she responded that she hadn't even noticed! She couldn't remember anything about why there were the two versions. My Occam's razor guess is that Apple had recreated the original "hello" at some point and the designer decided to skip the loop. When Susan was making the prints years ago, she looked for a nice high resolution copy of it, and Apple hadn't made the curlicue version of it "official" yet, so the second was the nicest copy out there.
(If you look carefully, there's also a "hello" print ad from the 80s that looks like someone at an ad agency just took a go at it.)
1. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=macintosh+hello
2. https://kareprints.com/products/hello-on-blue
To this day there's a ferry and company called Hal över ("take me across" in the local dialect, "Hol rüber" in standard German) https://www.hal-oever.de/de/home/ in Bremen, Northern Germany