I've heard it explained that "hey" used to be more of an urgent way to get someone's attention, rather than a casual "hello" like it is now, so it sounded rude to some older folks.
You have a boss. A wrinkled plus-sized brown business jacket of a man whose idea of "cutting costs" is turning the air conditioner off. If he caught on fire, you wouldn't piss on him to put him out. How do you address him? "Good morning Mr. Perkins, how are you doing today?"
You've got a war buddy. You met at boot camp, you served in the same company, he splinted your leg in the field, you're his kids' godfather. You'd kill and die for this man. How do you address him? "Ah god not this fucking asshole again."
Official formal polite language like "Thank you" and "You're welcome" is the pair of nitrile gloves I put on to handle the really noxious shit that comes my way. "w'thanks man" and "no problem" means I'm willing to handle you with my bare skin.
Ugggggh I went through this with my (boomer) boss for years until she finally accepted it lmao. Then it was, "WORRIES, CaptFeather! WORRIES!" as a joke every time I said it lol
Nobody expects online gaming to be a bastion of proper grammar.
People type in abbreviations when gaming mainly due to lack of time though... Much better to focus on the game than typing more than necessary to convey a simple message in those cases.
I only ever did that when typing via controller. If I had a keyboard I used full sentences but quickly. Sometimes the speed meant lack of proofreading though and weird things have been said.
Absolutely. I could understand it if it was a formal dining place I suppose. But it was a fucking Applebee's in a 20k population town with one other restaurant lmao
In the '90s I had a snap back that I decorated with stick on jewels (beadazzled) and on the back I wrote "YO!" in sparkly silver puffy paint. I thought I was so cool in that hat.
I'm glad the "not worth engaging with" attitude is dying out, but I do still think it's important to push for people to communicate accurately and effectively, which includes understanding and following grammatical rules when needed.
Language and vocabulary are essential to how we think and collectively problem-solve.
Yep, I get the "Language is constantly evolving" argument, but if I have to read your sentence three times just to parse it because you were too lazy to press a few keys, I'd consider that disrespectful to whomever is reading your comments
The point of language is to communicate information.
If the information was successfully relayed, the language exchange was successful.
If the person knows you MEAN "hello, I would like two of these items here, thank you good sir. hands cash and cashier says thank you You're welcome. Have a pleasant day, sir" when you SAY "Sup, two please. Thanks man. No problem have a good one." then you have successfully languaged.
So when my wife with a plethora of issues involving word recall says some insane thing because she can't remember the right words, as long as I understand what she means, her language did it's job.
There's descriptive and there's prescriptive linguistics. The first is the scientific endeavor of finding out and explaining how a language works. The second is the realm of anal politicians from the colonialist era who used language as an oppression tool to suppress local cultures and force the hegemonic culture upon indigenous people to make it easier to dominate, eradicate and subjugate them. Currently regarded as one of the defining elements of Genocides. For examples see, Spanish, French, English, Russian, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin … well you get the idea.
"Hej," pronounced "hey" is Swedish for "hello." Also "Hej hej" these days if you want to be more casual. It seemed weird to me at first, like "Hej mormor," for "Hello, grandmother," seemed informal, but if I said, "God afton," (good afternoon) my cousins said I sounded like a government issued language tape.
Probably not a super accurate representation of Swedish language, but it always brings a smile to my face to hear Brigitte's "hej hej" and other voicelines in Overwatch
From what I remember Brigitte's voice is quite good, maybe a slight Disney princess tint to the voice, that I find a bit misfiting, but that's about it. Her Swedish however isn't bad at all.
Exactly. I thought it was just a silly joke to open up conversation.
In Germany we have something similar. Our word for Hey, "Hai" actually has two meanings. Obviously it means "Hey" but also "Shark"
So it was common to respond with either "Where" or the more famous "Fish"
If you went for Fish it turned into a silly game of trying to compound the word as much as possible in responses to each other. Usually going like "Hey" "Fish" "Fin" "Soup". Sharkfish fin soup
I remember my mom getting uptight over the word "sucks", as in "that sucks" or "it really sucked". Literally everyone was saying it, there was no way I could help it lol
Mom used to get angry about me saying something sucks. She explained why it made her angry, and how it referenced a terrible and no-good sex act. I was about 16 at the time, and had already experienced this horrible, no good thing that nobody should do and just felt sorry for dad.
My 3 year old daughter has started saying "Hey!" Right before sharing a brilliant idea like "let's have ice cream for breakfast!" So I've started cutting her off with "Hay is for horses" and she just ignores me
A few years ago a very boomer gen-xer tried this on me and got very enraged when I would say "hey" instead of "hello {his name}". At one point even threatened me.
I believe it. I have seen them melt down over the tinest thing. You can shorten my name, like pretty much every first name, and one of the old shits I used to work with would scream and yell about it.
In my language, "Hi!" sounds like "Shark!", so sometimes I have to suppress the urge to say "is a fish", because Gen Xs I knew used to say it all the time.
My daughter is not allowed to call me 'dude' or 'bro.' I don't care if that's old fashioned or closed minded of me. I like being called Dad or Daddy, and shouldn't it be my choice what I'm called?
Remembering how common it was in like the early nineties for a kid to say "hey" and some old timer to respond "hay is for horses!" as part of some campaign to label "hey" as rude and force kids not to say it. They're gone now and we still say hey. You lost, old timers.
This reminds me of that old joke "what do gay horses eat? Hay hay haaaayyyyyy" that was told to us by a teacher in I dunno, middle school probably. Gotta love the 90s
I think people were mostly bothered by it when used to get someone's attention... For example, as a substitute for "excuse me" or using a person's name.
Oh wow, so really we were giving them a mild heart attack, every time we were saying hi? I don't know if that really justified the grammar police (not using that other word casually, anymore) but also these are the people who created boomers, so they definitely had to have some issues they were never able to work through.
I've been told no problem is bad to say to customers, as if saying it meant they usually are a problem, but not so much this time. Since I work in IT support though, every client I speak to is either a problem or has a problem by definition.