[MEET the man who wants to say good-bye to the word "<u>hell</u>o ." Leo Canales wants us all to say "heaveno " instead. Leo believes many of society's ills can be blamed on the unconscious use of the word "hell".]
"We promote a negative attitude every time we greet someone. Maybe it affects the way we behave to each other." According to Leo, the word "hello" was first used 120 years ago. He says, "Until then people said 'hullo', which was derived from 'hallow' a common greeting used in Chaucer's time.
49 comments
My fav subject when I studied linguistics. It´s false etymology. It´s not been used only 120 years ago and it´s a derivate from Hallow. Hullo is just a more popular orthography. And needless to say, it´s not coming from HELL. Better learn Spanish, German(hallo) and other languages, BEFORE SAYING THOSE NONSENSES.
Well "hello" as a greeting is a fairly new word, and people *did* say "hullo" before then. "Hello" was an expression of surprise or curiosity - "Hello, what's this?!"
"Hello" only came about with the invention of the telephone. There was a competition to decide what should be used as a greeting - it was between "hello" and "ahoy-hoy" (!) and "hello" won.
If you watch "The Simpsons" you'll see that Monty Burns answers the telephone with "ahoy-hoy!" as a reference to his age.
This guy is a NUTTER though, regardless.
Heavensinki, Finland? Wearing a heavenmet while skateboarding? Riding in a heavenicopter? If he's looking for a change, he'll (sorry, heav'en) have to go to Helen Hunt for it.
<< Heavensinki, Finland? Wearing a heavenmet while skateboarding? Riding in a heavenicopter? If he's looking for a change, he'll (sorry, heav'en) have to go to Helen Hunt for it. >>
Rimshot for John!
~David D.G.
"Until then people said 'hullo', which was derived from 'hallow' a common greeting used in Chaucer's time."
Err this may be a bit too obvious but if Hello is stemmed from Hallow and Hell is a word you want eliminated...
Why not just say Hallow without having to stretch the etymology of the word to it's limits?
"Breaking your leg hurts like 'hell', right? 'Hell'. They do it bellow the knee, 'low' - 'hell-low'. They do it twice - twice 'two' - 'hell-low two' - and jigsaw must mean 'you'. Hello to you."
[/Rimmer]
shoot me now, I'm a Dwarf nerd.
Fundie Linguistics Award, no contest!
Reminds me of a passage in a children book where a very proper schoolteacher replaces all the "rude" parts of words by their more proper equivalent, attracting much more attention to the sounds she hoped to get rid of in the process. For example, "con" (which in French means "cunt") was replaced by "idiot", so "consonnant" became "idiotsonnant", and so on...
Maybe it affects the way we behave to each other.
Yeah, or maybe not.
Ok... he's so damn close (and closer than some people on here) but he's got the root all wrong (even if he doesn't seem to care about that anyhow..)
Hello - first documented use - 1883, Americanized alt. of hallo, or British alternative hullo (1840), itself an alt. of holla, hollo, a shout to attract attention, first recorded 1588. Perhaps from holla! "stop, cease." Popularity as a greeting coincides with use of the telephone, where it won out over Alexander Graham Bell's suggestion, ahoy. Central telephone exchange operators were known as hello-girls (1889).
...and now you know.
Ermf. It's an example of vowel shift, dam it. Hello and Hullo sound very similar unless you exaggerate the vowel sounds.
Besides, spelling in Chaucer's time was ... erm ... optional. Even in his own works, I've seen him spell the same word several different ways. I don't have my Riverside Chaucer in front of me, but a common instance would be to replace an "i" in the middle of a word with a "y."
So then, he's trying to argue that Hello and Hullo are homophones, instead of being the exact same word, and that the difference of one vowel makes one of the words unacceptably tainted by Satan (ooh, he's a tricky one!).
As others have said: Why not go back to Halloo, instead of making some bastardized word? Maybe because then you wouldn't have any good vibes coming off the word to counteract the bad vibes you get from Hello.
Wikipedia cites 2 uses of the word "hello" in 1826. It was in dictionaries by 1883 though:
"Many stories date the first use of hello (with that spelling) to around the time of the invention of the telephone in 1876. It was however used in print in Roughing It by Mark Twain in 1872 (written between 1870 and 1871),[1] so its first use must have predated the telephone:
"A miner came out and said: 'Hello!'"
Earlier uses can be found back to 1849.[2] It was listed in dictionaries by 1883.[3]
The word was extensively used in literature by the 1860s.[4] Two early uses of hello can be found as far back as 1826.[5]
* Report on the trade in foreign corn, and on the agriculture of the north of Europe. by William Jacob, 1826. page 213
"On this occasion she switched it on to a patient who was awake and who merely said 'Hello Sister, what's the matter with you...'"
* The Every-day Book: Or Everlasting Calendar of Popular Amusements, Sports, Pastime, Ceremonies,...By William Hone, 1826 Page 1370
"Then hello boys! hello boys! shout and huzz....""
Hell-O's sound like some kind of breakfast cereal.
Leo, e-gods man, godspeed on your mission to de-satanize earth. Just remember, the world wouldn't have hell or satan if it wasn't for religion!
I'll just bet that Leo runs from the room if anyone orders a dinner entree containing shitake mushrooms, and he probably censors himself from using words like "cumulative" in mixed company.
Reminds of an incident with the porn filter of my university: it blocked part of a perfectly serious website because the URL included "docum"...
So THAT'S why Sweden is so much calmer than the US! We say "Hej" (pronounced like "hey") when we meet. No "hell" in that word. Good to have that cleared up...
The lower rate of gun-violence in Sweden has, of course, nothing to do with the fact that we have like one gun to every five-hundredth person, while the US seem to have one gun to every third person.
It's all due to the way we greet each other.
A few years ago, the exclamation of the "Viz" Comic character Finbarr Saunders - 'Fnarr-Fnarr!' - as well as the Japanese word 'Hentai' entered the Oxford English Dictionary, thus became official words in the English language.
Last year, 'Lolcat' was included in the OED. Wouldn't surprise me if 'Selfie' did the same in the next few years.
Good luck with that, Leo.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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