Language Change homework

1876 was a huge change for English language, Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone, this means people can communicate privately. There was not a common way for people to talk on the phone.

When the telephone was invented, “Hello” was a very new word to the English language. The Oxford English Dictionary says that “hello” became a common part of English language in 1827.  And instead of being used as a greeting, “hello” had a very different meaning.  “Hello” was used to bring notice to something or to express surprise.

Eg: "Hello! Your horse has stepped in flowers."

However Bell thought "Ahoy" would be the perfect greeting when talking on the telephone. But this did not catch on, instead books were written in how to use the telephone and suggested to greet people with 'hello' however people in the UK pronounced it 'Hullo'.

As phones became more and more popular this greeting of 'hello' was being used to greet people in person, where as greetings such as 'good day' were normally used in a face to face situation the word 'hello' was being used more often. And now today 'hello' is the most common British greeting.

However some magazines suggested saying 'Hallau' to answer the telephone and 'That is all' to end the telephone call. However this never caught on, 'Goodbye' is a established word used to end a meeting/conversation, and at the time this didn't change. (Still today it is the most popular word to use to end a conversation.)  However these days we have lots of different phrases/words to end a conversation.

Eg: "see you", "catch you later". Or goodbye being shortened to just "bye".  Not sure when this shortening happened but it could be when texting came out as people shorten words when texting.

 

As 'Hello' was originally used to express surprise or bring the attention to something, and now is used as a greeting, I think this is synchronous. However I don't think it is used anymore to bring a person's notice to something I think we use "Excuse me" for example "Excuse me, you've dropped your keys." But I do think we use it for surprise, if you see someone in the pub who hasn't seen you, you might go over and say "Hello, fancy seeing you here", although this could still be seen as a way of greeting. So perhaps 'Hello' has gone through narrowing as there are fewer senses of the word than it used to. This may be an interesting discussion as I'm not sure what language change technique it has gone through.