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.

  • dustyData@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    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.