English – Life In A Word

Seasoned Greeting

Back in my days in a corporate office, where the telephone was still the preferred means of communication, my peers and I developed a habit of answering calls without a greeting. The phone would ring and we’d simply answer with our name, like “John Smith…” and then wait for the caller to start the conversation. Whether this was an effort to be businesslike or a little intimidating can be debated. But it always felt awkward to me, like one of those greeting cards with nothing printed on the inside.

Did you know the origins of “hello” go back six hundred years? We’ve led with one version or another of the greeting countless times for centuries. Take your pick from “hi”, “hiya”, “hey”, “howdy”, and even “hellaw” down here in the South: human nature demands something of an icebreaker before a conversation gets underway. The no-greeting business calls I mentioned above suggest this is not a conversation, this is business. Otherwise we need a starter word. Think about it. How awkward would it be to hug, shake a hand, or fist-bump without uttering a single word?

The history of “hello” is dry and speculative but it’s safe to say most of us started using it as soon as we could speak. Then, inevitably, we either embraced the word as our greeting or moved on to one of its offspring. For me the preference was “hey”. I find myself using “hey” whether I’m meeting someone for the first time or they’re a long-time acquaintance. I tried “hey” on for size a long time ago and it suits me just fine.

How “hello” reduced to “hi” is anyone’s guess, but it makes sense in the framework of the not-so-Queen’s English we use in America. A Brit saying “hi” doesn’t sound quite right. An American? Pretty much what we expect. A Brit can substitute “Good morning” or “Good evening” for “Hello”, while Americans just go with “Morning” or “Evening”.

But even “hi” seems a little passé these days. I’m just as likely to get a Yo!, Sup!, or Hey-ya! from Millennials and younger. Furthermore, if you gave any of those generations the choice they’d rather greet you with a text than with their voice. That leads to a whole new approach to starting conversations. Who starts a text message with “Hello, Dave!” More likely it’s just “Dave…”, an emoji, or no greeting at all.

[Blogger’s note: My favorite instance of “hello” comes at the end of the movie Jerry Maguire. The line, “You had me at ‘hello'” has been recycled many times since but never as powerfully. Pretty much launched Renée Zellweger’s career in a single sentence.]

Beyond “hello” itself, the inflections of the voice convert the greeting into something else entirely. We demand attention by saying He-LLO!!! We question attention by saying HELLO? (… “is anybody home?”). And if we say “hello” quickly we’re suggesting we don’t have time for the conversation that follows. A greeting can make a lasting impression inside of a single word.

We’ve lived in the South for a little while now, and in that time we’ve learned a new approach when it comes to greeting one another. When we’re introduced to someone for the first time we often exchange “hey” as the greeting. When we see someone we already know we go with “hey hey”. I’m still trying on “hey hey” for size. It feels a little forced to someone who grew up in the West. Give me a few more years.

A decade or two from now a wholly new greeting will be out there; one we’ll never see coming (seriously, did you ever think “yo yo” would replace “hello”?) Maybe this new salutation will suit me or maybe I’ll flat out reject it. Either way, “hello” rests comfortably in my back pocket whenever I need it. Six hundred years of history suggests it’s not going anywhere in the next twenty.

Some content sourced from the BBC article, “‘Hullo, hillo, holla’, the 600-year-old origins of the word ‘Hello'”.

Foods are Something Else!

Let’s talk about hamburgers. Depending on your druthers a carefully-proportioned build of the bread, meat, vegetables and condiments makes for an American classic that – despite trendy variations – hasn’t changed in over a century. But here’s a curiosity for you: Why does every ingredient in a burger also serve an entirely different purpose in the English language? Let’s disassemble, shall we? Top to bottom, I now give you the eleven essential ingredients.

64-druthers

The bun comes first of course; the capstone to lock all other burger components into place. But a bun is also an element of a hairstyle, is it not? You have that coil of hair on top of the head or at the nape of the neck and you call it a bun. We even have the man-bun. Er, not me. The only bun I identify with is on my burger.

Below the bun we find a very small vegetable garden. For today’s purposes we include onions, tomatoes, lettuce and pickles. But did you know, if you know all there is to know about a topic, you “know your onions“? Did you also know a tomato is old-world slang for a woman or a girl? Lettuce is today’s language for cash – dollar bills if you will. And a pickle, well that’s one of those predicaments where you say, “how did I get into this?”

Here’s a favorite ingredient. I like bacon on my burger. But not only are we all trying to bring home the bacon (i.e. make a living), but we’re also occasionally trying to save someone’s bacon (i.e. they desperately need our help).

Time for condiments. In no particular order, squeeze on a little mustard, relish and ketchup. Now, if I approve of your hamburger I tell you it “cuts the mustard“. And when you sit down to enjoy your burger I assume you relish the taste.

(Confession timeout: ketchup exists for the one and only purpose of serving as king of the condiments. Call it ketchup or catsup; all I know is the Chinese claim its invention. So opportunity knocks; let’s get ketchup out of the bottle and into an alternative use in the English language!)

Now add a slice of cheese. Think about that ingredient for a moment. Where else do you use cheese outside of the food world? Why, in front of the camera of course! And when you “say cheese” let’s also agree it has nothing to do with the food, but rather the way the word forces your mouth into the requisite smile for the photographer.

We’re almost there. The beef (patty) that is the essential ingredient of the hamburger is so much more than ground round. It’s a reference to muscle or brawn (but not to be confused with “beefcake” as this blog is rated “G”). Having a beef is about a complaint or an argument. Building something in size or amount means beefing it up.

Let’s not forget about the bottom bun. If we combine it with the top bun we have the plural, and that of course refers to a certain part of the human anatomy. Pursue your “buns of steel” if you must; I will settle for my buns on burgers.

That’s all for today’s enlightenment on the vocabulary of the hamburger. For extra credit check out the spice rack (“salt”, “pepper”, and so many more) or the bakery case (“cookies”, “rolls”), Foods are chomping to be more than just something to eat!

Sounds Good to Me

At the movies last weekend, as we waited for the lights to dim, two women were having a conversation in the row in front of us. What struck me was not what they were talking about, but how they sounded. Their voices projected loud and clear above the quieter chatter of others in the theater. Yet they were talking normally, neither straining nor raising their voices. It’s like they had built-in megaphones.

I find that fascinating about the human voice. With one person the words come out all velvety and smooth, like honey-dripped taffy. With others it’s all cymbals and brass band.

Take “Debbie” on the current season of television’s “Survivor”. If you watch, you know who Debbie is (the self-proclaimed uber-intelligent “Brain Tribe” member). But even if you didn’t know all that about Debbie, you’d recognize her voice in a heartbeat. There’s just something about her combination of accent, volume, and non-stop blah-blah-blah.

When I hear voices like Debbie’s, I’m spirited back in time to high school speech class. Midway through that semester so many years ago, our teacher brought in an “alumna” to demonstrate public speaking at its most refined. I’ll never forget it. Our guest spent several moments standing quietly in front of us; eyes closed, breathing deep, as if preparing for a long delivery. Then she simply said:

“Thank you for the plums. They were delicious.”

That was it. That was her entire speech. But I was utterly spellbound. The way she delivered just two lines: enunciating each word completely, starting and finishing each sentence smoothly, captivating her audience with her words as well as her body language – was the total sensory experience. I could hear her eating those plums. I could see the juice dripping down her lips. I could even taste those plums myself (and they were delicious). To this day it is one of the most powerful moments of speech I have ever witnessed.

The accents in the Southern states – i.e. Virginia or South Carolina or Georgia – are similarly spellbinding. I remember touring a plantation house once when I was a teenager, and our guide was a short, heavy-set black woman who possessed one the softest, sweetest voices I had ever heard. Her words were so calming and mesmerizing I found myself falling asleep on my feet, jaw dropped. I hope she realized that was a compliment, because I can still hear her voice to this day.

The Irish accent is even more affecting to me. Male or female; on the Emerald Isle or watching the movie “Brooklyn”; there is something utterly captivating about the Irish spin on the spoken word. It is soft and fluid, with subtle twists of pronunciation and emphasis. It’s like an audio massage. I could listen to the female Irish voice for hours on end (just as my wife could listen to the male equivalent. Hate you for that, Colin Farrell).

Since I am neither Irish nor a resident of the South, nor even a refined public speaker, I settle instead for using words that simply sound nice. Search the Web and you’ll find lists of “the most beautiful words” or “the sweetest-sounding words”. Here are some of my favorites:

cashmere
cinnamon
chimes
dulcet
effervescence
grace
lithe
mist
murmur
rhapsody
sapphire
serene

Don’t those sound nice and velvety? Don’t they bring just a tinge of comfort, or conjure up images of the nicer things in life? To conclude, some of us may not possess the most pleasant of pipes (like Survivor Debbie). But at least we have some sugary words that can bring us a little closer to that honey-dripped taffy.

Planed English

Have you ever listened to a friend or family member talk, and you realize you just enjoy listening to them regardless of what they’re talking about? Why does this happen? What gets the credit for your undivided attention? I would venture to say your friend or family member has a personal command of the English language. That is, you are drawn to this person’s unique subset of the hundreds of thousands of words available to them. He or she can string together words in a way that makes you smile or laugh, or even react the particular way they would want you to. They speak with fluency and aptness. They speak with eloquence.

Today’s generation does not speak with eloquence. Thanks to the convenience of email and text, in fact they hardly speak at all. My children have a habit of telling me “they spoke to so and so” and when pressed, I realize they’re referring to texting. The phone calls of my generation have become the texts of theirs. Even email is beginning to take a back seat to instant messaging.

Whatever the medium, today’s conversations have been reduced to a minimum of words, or not even words at all! Incomplete sentences. Acronyms (i.e. LOL). Emoticons. Hashtags. It might as well be its own language. Are we really intent on leaving “Queen’s” English in the rear-view mirror, for something not even qualifying as “plain” English?

Most of what we see and do and experience can be summed up in a few words. My endeavor with this blog is to bring a single, elegant word to the table, back it up with a meaningful moment or story in my life, and send you away thinking how you might use that word more often in your everyday conversations. We all have something to say. But can we say it in a way that captivates and inspires? Can we say it with eloquence?

Join me on this journey, won’t you? Let me show you life in a word.