Photo: Kamal Alkhatib via Unsplash.
Saying hello.
Part of the fun of blogging, for me, is figuring out what photo should go with the featured article. Most of the time, I choose the one that comes with the article, but today, I decided to see what the website Unsplash had to offer. I like the “hello” picture above, and I like giving the photographer credit on social media.
The story, by Jonathan Wells at the BBC, tells us more than we ever imagined about the word “hello.”
“It’s been 200 years since the word ‘hello’ was first used in print – though its beginnings date back to the 15th Century. How has the language of greetings evolved around the world — and what does it tell us about ourselves?
“We use ‘hello’ dozens of times a day without thinking – during phone calls, emails and face-to-face encounters. We sing it along with Adele and Lionel Richie, and we have watched it spun into moments of screen gold in Jerry Maguire (‘You had me at hello’), and Scarface (‘Say hello to my little friend!’). It’s been used to sell everything from mobile phones (Motorola’s ‘Hello, Moto’) to lingerie (Wonderbra’s iconic ‘Hello boys’), and it has been borrowed to name computer programs and celebrity magazines. …
“Two centuries ago, on 18 January 1826, ‘hello’ made what is thought to be its earliest recorded appearance on the page, in a Connecticut newspaper called the Norwich Courier. …
“By the 1850s, it had crossed the Atlantic to Britain – appearing in publications such as the London Literary Gazette – and became increasingly common in print. Like the go-to greetings in other languages, ‘hello’ also says something about the English-speaking world – depending on which variation, abbreviation or inflection of the word we choose to use. …
“Whether due to dialect or accent influences, or the brevity demanded by online communication, which ‘hello’ you choose says a lot about you, and can indicate age, nationality, or even mood. 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. …
” ‘These subtle intonational contours can change its meaning,’ says Alessandro Duranti, professor of linguistic anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. ‘For example, when someone says “hello” with a stretched final vowel, it can question what the other person just said, as in “Hello, are you paying attention?” or “Hello, you must be kidding.” ‘
“This capacity to convey nuance through tone and form is no modern invention; even in its first printed appearances, ‘hello’ was a patchwork of influences, derivations and applications drawn from several languages.
“The pre-printed origins of the word ‘hello’ are disputed. The most commonly cited etymology is the Old High German ‘halâ’ – a cry historically used to hail a ferryman. The Oxford English Dictionary also points to ‘halloo’ (a hunting call that urged hounds to run faster) as a possible linguistic root. It notes several early spellings, including ‘hullo,’ ‘hillo’ and ‘holla’ – the latter thought to have derived from the 15th-Century French ‘hol,’ an exclamation meaning ‘whoa!’ or ‘stop!’ In English sources, the OED lists the earliest form as the late-16th-Century ‘hollo.’
“Simon Horobin, professor of English language and literature at Magdelen College, Oxford, notes that such semantic shifts and spelling changes may also be explained by regional accents and differences in pronunciation. … ‘But for origins and early history,’ he adds, ‘we are dependent upon written evidence, which is patchy at the best of times. For a colloquial word like this, which would have appeared much earlier and more frequently in speech than in writing, it is especially tricky to establish a definite timeline.’ “
More at the BBC, here. And just for fun, read what British people mean by the word “sorry,” here.
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