rom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia For other uses, see Hello (disambiguation). "Hallo" redirects here.

For other uses, see Hallo (disambiguation). Page semi-protected "Hello" is frequently used to begin a conversation Hello is a salutation or greeting in the English language. It is attested in wri ting as early as the 1860s.[1] Contents [hide] 1 First use 2 Etymology 2.1 Telephone 2.2 Hullo 2.3 Hallo and hollo 2.4 Cognates 3 "Hello, World" computer program 4 The Apple DOS HELLO program 5 Perception of "Hello" in other nations 6 See also 7 References 8 External links First use Hello, with that spelling, was used in publications as early as 1833. These incl ude an 1833 American book called The Sketches and Eccentricities of Col. David C rockett, of West Tennessee,[2] which was reprinted that same year in The London Literary Gazette.[3] The word was extensively used in literature by the 1860s.[4] Etymology According to the Oxford English Dictionary, hello is an alteration of hallo, hol lo,[5] which came from Old High German "hal, hol, emphatic imperative of haln, holn to fetch, used especially in hailing a ferryman."[6] It also connects the develo pment of hello to the influence of an earlier form, holla, whose origin is in th e French hol (roughly, 'whoa there!', from French l 'there').[7] As in addition to hello, halloo,[8] hallo, hollo, hullo and (rarely) hillo also exist as variants or related words, the word can be spelt using any of all five vowels.[citation needed] Telephone The use of hello as a telephone greeting has been credited to Thomas Edison; acc ording to one source, he expressed his surprise with a misheard Hullo.[9] Alexan der Graham Bell initially used Ahoy (as used on ships) as a telephone greeting.[ 10][11] However, in 1877, Edison wrote to T.B.A. David, the president of the Cen tral District and Printing Telegraph Company of Pittsburgh: Friend David, I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What you think? Edison - P.S. first cost of sender & receiver to manufacture is only $7.00.[12] By 1889, central telephone exchange operators were known as 'hello-girls' due to the association between the greeting and the telephone.[11] Hullo Hello may be derived from hullo, which the American Merriam-Webster dictionary d escribes as a "chiefly British variant of hello,"[13] and which was originally u sed as an exclamation to call attention, an expression of surprise, or a greetin g. Hullo is found in publications as early as 1803.[14] The word hullo is still in use, with the meaning hello.[15][16][17][18][19] Hallo and hollo Hello is alternatively thought to come from the word hallo (1840) via hollo (als o holla, holloa, halloo, halloa).[13] The definition of hollo is to shout or an exclamation originally shouted in a hunt when the quarry was spotted:[13] Fowler

's has it that "hallo" is first recorded "as a shout to call attention" in 1864. [20] It is used by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's famous poem The Rime of the Ancient Mari ner written in 1798: And the good south wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play Came to the mariners' hollo! Hallo is also German, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch and Afrikaans for Hello. If I fly, Marcius,/Halloo me like a hare. Coriolanus (I.viii.7), William Shakespeare Webster's dictionary from 1913 traces the etymology of holloa to the Old English halow and suggests: "Perhaps from ah + lo; compare Anglo Saxon eal." According to the American Heritage Dictionary, hallo is a modification of the ob solete holla (stop!), perhaps from Old French hola (ho, ho! + la, there, from La tin illac, that way).[21] The Old English verb, hlan (1. wv/t1b 1 to heal, cure, save; greet, salute; gehl! Hosanna!), may be the ultimate origin of the word.[22] Hlan is likely a cognate o f German Heil and other similar words of Germanic origin. Bill Bryson asserts in his book Mother Tongue that "hello" comes from Old English hl bo u ("Hale be thou" , or "whole be thou", meaning a wish for good health). Cognates This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of orig inal research may be removed. (March 2009) The word "hello" is found in many other languages. It is often only used when an swering the telephone, or as an informal greeting. Language Cognate Usage Afrikaans hallo general greeting Albanian alo when answering the telephone Arabic l when answering the telephone Assamese hllo when answering the telephone Bengali hlo when answering the telephone Bulgarian (alo) when answering the telephone Catalan hola! friendly (informal) greeting Croatian halo? when answering the telephone Czech Hal? when answering the telephone Danish hallo! when answering the telephone Dutch hallo! general greeting, normally not used for answering the telephone. Esperanto ha lo? when answering the telephone Estonian hallo; halloo when answering the telephone Finnish haloo? when answering the telephone French all? when answering the telephone German Hallo?, Hallo! when answering the telephone / friendly (informal) greet ing Gujarati (hal) when answering the telephone Hungarian hell! friendly (informal) greeting hall! when answering the telephone Hebrew ( hallo) when answering the telephone / friendly (informal) greeting Hindi (hal) when answering the telephone Icelandic Hall when answering the telephone Irish Heileo Rarely used Japanese (har) friendly (informal) greeting Kannada halloa when answering the telephone Khmer all when answering the telephone Lithuanian alio? when answering the telephone Macedonian (alo) when answering the telephone Marathi hello when answering the telephone Norwegian hallo! general greeting Persian alo when answering the telephone

Polish halo when answering the telephone Portuguese al? when answering the telephone (Brazil only) Romanian alo when answering the telephone Russian (allo), when answering the telephone Serbian /halo when answering the telephone Spanish hola! friendly (informal) greeting al? (Latin America) when answering the telephone Swedish hall! Tagalog helo! Thai (hn l) when answering the telephone Turkish alo! when answering the telephone Ukrainian ! when answering the telephone Vietnamese a l! when answering the telephone "Hello, World" computer program Main article: Hello world program Students learning a new computer programming language will often begin by writin g a "Hello, world!" program, which outputs that greeting to a display screen or printer. The widespread use of this tradition arose from an introductory chapter of the book The C Programming Language by Kernighan & Ritchie, which reused the following example taken from earlier memos by Brian Kernighan at Bell Labs: int main() { printf("hello, world"); } The Apple DOS HELLO program A diskette formatted to boot Apple DOS 3.x on the Apple II series of computers w ill look for a BASIC program to run automatically after the operating system has booted. By default, the name of the program is HELLO, and is specified as a par ameter of the INIT command used to format a floppy disk. For the HELLO program t o work, it has to be created in the same language (Integer BASIC or Applesoft BA SIC) that is present in the language ROM of the system the disk is being booted on. Perception of "Hello" in other nations In some other nations, especially the ones that had little contact with foreigne rs at the time, Westerners were often viewed as people who constantly said "hell o" and little else. Chinese novelist Jung Chang describes this view as follows: In my mind... foreigners said 'hello' all the time, with an odd intonation.... W hen boys played 'guerrilla warfare,' which was their version of cowboys and Indi ans, the enemy side would have thorns glued onto their noses and say 'hello' all the time. Chang, Jung[23]