Why We Say Hello
—Ben Bousada
When you first began studying English, one of the earliest things you probably learned to say was "hello." This greeting is so common that you may assume the word "hello" has been used in this way since the dawn of the English language. However, it wasn't all that long ago that saying "hello" meant something entirely different.
The first recorded use of "hello" occurred in 1827. At that time, it was used to get someone's attention, much like the phrase "excuse me." However, American inventor Thomas Edison had other plans for the word. When the first telephones became publicly available in the late 1870s, Edison began encouraging people to greet callers with "hello." This bothered the telephone's inventor, Alexander Bell, who insisted that people use the older term "ahoy" instead.
In the end, it was the publishers of the first phone books that settled the debate. These phone books came with instructions on how to use the newly invented telephone. In these instructions, "hello" was listed as the proper greeting to use. Consequently, with the spread of the telephone, "hello" soon became the everyday greeting we know so well today.
打招呼為什麼用Hello？
你開始學英語時可能最早學會說的詞彙之一就是「哈囉」(hello)。這個招呼語非常普遍以致於你可能會認為「哈囉」這個字從有英文開始就是這樣用的。然而，在不是太久之前，說「哈囉」是指完全不同的意思。
「哈囉」最早的使用紀錄是在一八二七年。當時是用來引起某人的注意，就很像「不好意思」(excuse me)這個詞彙一樣。然而，美國發明家湯瑪斯．愛迪生對這個字有其他打算。最早的電話在一八七○年代晚期開始被大眾使用時，愛迪生開始鼓勵大家接電話時用「哈囉」向來電者打招呼。這惹惱了發明電話的人亞歷山大．貝爾，他堅持大家要用較舊的用語「嗯荷」(ahoy)。
最後是最早的電話簿出版商解決了這個爭議。這些電話簿附有如何使用電話這個新發明的用法說明。在這些說明中，「哈囉」被列為適合使用的招呼語。結果，由於電話的傳播，「哈囉」不久就變成我們今天非常熟悉的日常招呼用語了。
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