Hiya

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, good afternoon.

Hi, who’s this?

My name’s Ruth, and I’m calling from Philadelphia.

Well, thanks a lot for calling, Ruth. How can we help you?

Thank you. I have a question about a greeting that I was using until recently when my daughter begged me to stop using the word or phrase or contraction. It’s Haya.

I’m from upstate PA, which I call upstate, in a rural area about five miles outside of Quakertown. I now live in Philadelphia, but I’m just wondering, A, is it a word? And B, am I correct? All I could find is it means hi, how are you?

Mm—

And how are you spelling it, Ruth?

Well, just phonetically, hiya, H-I-Y-A.

Yeah.

Okay.

Okay.

How old is your daughter?

22.

Mm—

And what did she say exactly?

Mom, no one understands you. What in the world are you saying? You sound wacky and you need to stop.

About the word higher? And do you have that kind of relationship where she’s allowed to talk like that to her mother?

Absolutely. When it comes to diction, yes.

Okay.

Okay.

You know, you might want to push back a little bit because Martha and I think you’re fine.

Oh, good.

And there are lots and lots of people who say this. It goes back about 100 years, maybe more, across the United States. It’s never been that common, but it’s like howdy and a variety of other kinds of greetings that we have that are a corruption of a longer phrase or form, and it’s a perfectly fine way to greet someone.

I mean, I don’t think you would go to Buckingham Palace and say, hiya, Queenie.

Right.

Eat curtsy first.

Yes, and then say, hiya, Queenie.

So is it a, since my family’s from Brooklyn, does it have any connection to New York, or is it just a backwoods kind of thing?

No, I’m looking, there’s evidence for this both in the Dictionary of American Regional English and in the Oxford English Dictionary, and they have citations going back to 1914, and they’re fairly sprinkled around the United States. I don’t see any kind of geographic component to this.

Interesting.

And it’s British and American, by the way. It’s not just American.

Yeah.

All right, so I guess I’ll duke it out with my daughter.

Well, it isn’t quite a duke, but the one thing I would gently say to her is that she’s 22. You’re an unknown number of years older.

Yes, we can guess.

You’ve seen more of the world and had more opportunities to pick up language. And perhaps there are some things in the world that she hasn’t heard before because she’s not experienced enough.

There you go.

I mean, inexperience is part of it.

Right, right.

Okay, well, I’m happy to know because it’s been bugging me for a while.

Yeah, yeah.

Tell her she needs to get out more.

I will.

Or read the dictionary more.

Thank you, thank you.

You’re welcome.

And listen to our show.

Thanks for calling, Ruth.

Thank you.

Thanks, Ruth.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Who doesn’t say hiya?

Well, you know, that’s part of the language thing, though, right? The push back and forth between each other as we try to guide each other toward language paths that we prefer, right?

Yeah.

That happens in families. It’s a normal kind of dialogue. But the daughter here, she might have been embarrassed by her mother. Maybe we should have asked Ruth, do you say just hiya or do you go, hiya? I mean, how is this happening?

Hello.

877-929-9673.

Bring us your family disputes.