Pickles from Sunday, Apr. 9. within which the neighbour says she finds “hello” offensive because it’s got “hell” in it. This seems a little more political than Pickles usually gets, and it has me wondering - is this a product of the cartoonist’s overactive imagination, or is this a reality in the U.S.? If I ran into this, I would assume the person saying it was a loon and treat them accordingly (i.e. humour them and not take it seriously). Has anybody run into this? Does it surprise you? Would it surprise you?
It’snot out of the cartoonist’s imagination.
As far as I can tell, this fellow started the thing back in '98.
Just to be clear, it’s not a huge thing anywhere, as far as I know - just that it’s not the cartoonist’s invention.
I think it’s just a joke on people’s mores. I don’t think it’s necessarily political. We had a similar thing on British TV, when the astronomer Patrick Moore started pronouncing “UrAnus” as “UR[schwa]nus” to avoid schoolchild sniggering. Someone wrote a letter of complaint, because they didn’t want to hear the word “Urine” during primetime.
I remember reading about some organization which required its employees to answer the phone “heaveno.” And I also remember reading on some message board- I think it was this one- that one poster remembered that one of his Catholic school teachers said he should refer to helicopters as heavenicopters, because there was no way in…um, heaven that such a marvelous invention could have been created by Satan. So yes, this stuff exists.
Seems like a rather niggardly attempt at writing to me.
It goes further than just objecting to “hello”. When I was in college, some of the local fundies objected to a medieval fair that was being held as a fundraiser at a church nearby–because “medieval” has the word “evil” in it, y’see.
And did he subscribe to the heavenocentric view of the solar system? :wally (him, not you)
Wait a minute, moral has oral in it. That can’t be good. And canal has anal in it. And titter - I think I might faint. :eek:
That might have happened, but I went to a college that most of you would think was a paragon of fundy wackiness, and I never heard anyone mention these kinds of things.
Only because they never thought of it: we had the same issue with “medieval” around here.
If you follow Tengu’s link and click on Resolution and Proclamation, you’ll find that “Heaveno” is the official greeting of Kleberg County and Kingsville, Texas. One of them makes it clear that it isn’t mandatory.
There was a parody of Psychology Today magazine a while back. One of the articles noted on the cover was “You Can’t Spell Analysis without A-N-A-L.” 
When I was a kid we had a Calvary baptist family living across the way. the kids would say “Heckalopter” because they shouldn’t swear. I still call the damn things heckalopters if I’m not really paying attention.
Stupid Clifford.
Never mind the fact that hello is based on hallowed.
Everybody outside the U.S. probably thinks this is a joke because they can’t imagine a culture that narrow-minded, intolerant, and illiterate. Sadly, we have people out to prove them wrong on a daily basis.
A few years ago a kid got in trouble for wearing a Billabong T-shirt to school – you know, because of the drug reference. I can’t be arsed to look for a link.
Hm, I kinda like that. Heckalopter, that’s pretty fun to say. Heckalopter! What a great word.
Maybe it’s because I live in California, but I’ve never heard of such a thing as objecting to syllables in a word. Are these the same people who are worried about June 6th of this year? (6/6/06, in case you haven’t heard)
How about Sex Wax T-shirts?
re: Word structure out of context
Some people just have too much time on their hands.
Oh, and limited intelligence, too.
The fact is that you don’t know anything about the people I mentioned. Let’s not have the automatic bashing of millions of people just because you don’t agree with them. That doesn’t make them all idiots.