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Now the VOA Special English Program, Words and Their Stories.
Today, our word is Hello. The word Hello probably is used more often than any other word in the United States. American use it again and again.
Where did the word come from? There are all kinds of ideas. Some say it came from a French expression meaning ho there. This greeting may have arrived in England during the Norman Conquest in the year 1066.
Ho there changed slowly over the years. The word Hallo was often heard in England in the 1300's during the days of poet Geoffrey Chaucer. 200 years later, in William Shakespeare's time, hallo had become hello and sailors and hunters used sound like horllo and hollo.
A Brooklyn college professor, Helen Curlisburg, reported that he had found that true story behind the word Hello. He said American inventer, Thomas Edison, created it. Professor Curlisburg said that at first Edison used the word Hullo when working on his sound recording machine - the phonograph. Later, when Edison became interested in the telephone, he changed the word. Professor Curlisburg offered evidence for his idea. He discovered a letter written by Thomas in 1877 to a businessman in the city Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh was about to get a telephone system. In the letter, Edison proposed using a word hello. He said it was a word that could be heard clearly when beginning to speak on the telephone.
Thomas Edison did not invent the telephone. Alexander Graham Bell did. Bell wanted people to use a different word when they began speaking on the telephone. He liked the word sailors used to communicate with another ship Ahorli. Edison's word, however, proved more popular. It was shorter and better way of saying: Are you there or are you ready to talk. By the late 1880's, telephone operators were called hello girls.
In fact, that expression appeared in Mark Twain's story, it connected Yankee in Kentucky court. A man who worked in Thomas laboratory, Francis Gail also reported that Edison created the word hello. In 1907, Mr. Gail said the president of Telephone and Telegraph Company told this story: One day, Edison lifted the telephone reveiver and shouted the most satisfied word hello and that word has gone clear around the world.
This VOA Special English Program, Words and Their Stories was written by Marilyn Christiano. Maurice Joyce was the narrator. I'm Shirley Griffith.