WHAT DO YOU SAY?

Northland Age, Volume IV, Issue 46, 6 July 1908, Page 2

WHAT DO YOU SAY?

Whan such inanities as “tootle-100/ and “pip-pip” pass muster for salutations, it is high time that the English language devised something adequate to the occasions of meeting and parting. The old forms, “Hew do you do” and “Good-bye,” are not onfty hopelessly formal, but absolutely meaningless, whereas the habit of falling back upon the weather for a casual greeting—like “nice day !” “lovely weather !” or “beastly weather, ain’t it ?”—a more usual greeting qf late—is to be deprecated, owing to its obviousness. The average Briton hates gush. The French custom of masculine kissing, and other forms of fulsome greeting are abhorrent tq his shy and reticent nature, and so he rushes to the other extreme and contents himself with “Well, how’s things?” There's a sort of all-inclusiveness about this phrase which seems to suit his desire to get ali the formalities of greeting over in the space of three words. An older form of the same idea is “How goes it ?”—a salutation which is hard to beat for indefinite*ness.

But parting tirea the British most. He would rather die than cry, and he ransacks the slang dictionary to avoid saying anything sentimental. Even the French “Adieu.” which is a shortened form of “God be with you till we meet again,” is used flippantly by the Englishman, with a wave of the hand or walking-stiok, and often the added tag of “Be good !” He likes to part always, even if his friend be going to Klondyke or to Timbuctoo, as if he would meet him again at the club in the evening, or next day at the latest. “So long,” he says and the parting is often -“so long” that young men have become old men in the meanwhile.

The same desire to escape a scene accounts for the use of baby language in parting. Yet, if one comes to think of it, there is something incongruous about two six foot, fifteenstone men saying “Ta-ta” or “Byebye” to one another. Yet how common it is ! Even the beautiful French valedictory exclamation “au revoir !” is often turned to a cheap witticism—“ Olive oil !” Such rubbish as “tra-la-la'* and “ting-ting” seems almost beneath one’s notice, but they are heard daily nevertheless, while the comical incongruity of such expressions as “See you lately, old chap,” is their only redeeming feature. But after all, the most elaborate and stately expressions of interest in? one’s welfare may be qnly empty words. Politeness, like beauty, is often only skin deep, and the man who says, “Well, ta-ta, old chappie—mind the step !” is often a goqd fellow, whose informality is only a cloak for the depth of his feelings.