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What do you say when you run into your friend at the mall? Most likely，you say“hello．” But have you ever stopped to think about why?
“Hello”is a relatively new greeting．It first appeared sometime in the mid-l800s，but many people would not have dreamed of using it．‘‘Hello’’was considered a very impolite way to greet someone．Instead，people used formal expressions like“How do you do?’’
Back then，there were several words that sounded like“hello”but they were used to get someone’s attention or to express surprise．For example，if you caught your little brother stealing your snack，you might have said：“Halloa there! Stop eating my cheese!”If you found a fly in your soup，you might have shouted，“Hullo! How did that get in there?”
Everything started to change in 1876，when Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone．The first telephones didn’t have numbers you could dial，nor did they have bells．Instead，your telephone sent signals along telephone lines to a central office where an operator would answer by saying something like“Are you there．sir?”or“Who is wanted?’’The operator would then connect your phone to the phone of the person you wanted to reach．There was just one small problem．Since telephones didn’t ring，how would the person you were calling know that you were “on the line” ?The answer is that you would yell into your phone and hope someone on the other end heard you．But what would you yell? And what would the person you were calling say when they were going to answer? Bell suggested“Ahoy!Ahoy!”but it didn’t become popular．Then the famous inventor Thomas Edison suggested the word hello．That became popular right away．
According to Allen Koenigsberg，a professor of history at Brooklyn College in New York City，Edison liked“hello”because it was easy to hear．“And others，”says Koenigsberg，“found that，of all things，the word‘hello’told the listener,‘You’d better get to the phone，because there’s a message coming in．’”
“Hello”became so popular that by 1878 telephone operators were required to use it．In fact，operators received the nickname(绰号)“Hello Girls．”Soon，“hello”became not just the standard way to answer the phone，but an accepted way to greet people in person．
So the next time you answer your phone with a“hello，”or its shortened form，“hi，”think about Edison．If it weren’t for him，you might be saying“Ahoy!Ahoy!”instead！
46．Why was“hello”seldom used when it first appeared?
A．It was too informal． B．It was hard to pronounce．
C．It was considered to be rude．D．There were other words 1ike“hello”．
47．Which of the following was used to greet people in the mid-1800s?
A．How do you do? B．Hello． C．Halloa D．Ahoy．
48．“Hullo”was used to show something___________．
A．interesting B．exciting C．boring D．unexpected
49．Paragraph 4 is mainly about______．
A. how the telephone improved
B．the invention of the telephone
C．the friendship between Bell and Edison
D．how“hello”was used to answer the telephone
50．We can know from the text that____________．
A．Bell advised girls to use“hello”
B．“hello”became popular thanks to Thomas Edison
C．the telephone has changed the way people speak
D．“hello”got popular as soon as the telephone was invented
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