Watching Asian films you do realise that wherever you are in the World, when you answer the phone you say 'Hello'.
Whether it's a Japanese, Chinese, South Korean or Indian film, they all answer the phone with the English greeting 'Hello' which seems a bit strange. It also seems strange they suddenly start speaking in English for a few sentences in an Indian film and then back into their own language again.
Not sure why some sentences are spoken in English and some in Indian but it does show up how bad the subtitles are when the English subs read nothing like what is coming out of the actors mouth.
The song 'Happy Birthday' is also sang in English but that's probably because the words wouldn't scan if they sang it in Korean.
The English language is full of words from other countries but i do wonder if a family in Hong Kong watch a Hollywood film and say 'Wow, they say Hello when they answer the phone as well'.
I expect at some point in the future all the Worlds languages will meld together or we will hit upon a form of Esperanto that everyone speaks but at least we can go to Asia and greet people and know we will be understood.
3 comments:
interesting hypothesis. it would be boring if agreed. so i challenge.
my arguments:
1. supposedly you speak english and i speak english, yet there are very may differences
2. somebody from texas can barely understand someone from massachusetts, new jersey, or the long island
3. when obama talks nobody knows what the hell he means
q
Curious, I didn't know that, probably because I don't watch many films from that countries. Thank god in my country nobody answer with a 'hello', or would be lynched for snob.
The term Hello is a mutated form of Ahoy which was how the first phones were answered and it seems to have stuck and spread around the globe with the telephone.
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