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What does Ahoy and Hoy Hoy mean exactly?
I know this girl at school and she's kind of weird and different. She always greets me by saying, "Ahoy!" or, "Hoy-hoy!" and I'm not really sure what to make of it. I assume it's just, "Hi!" but I don't want to make that assumption and come to find out it means something else or is a different language for something. She is particularly interested in the Japanese culture if that has ANYTHING to do with anything. "Ahoy" makes me think of pirates saying, "Ahoy matey!" but she never says the matey part so I'm thinking it's probably not the same thing.
Thanks.
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lol, it's just another way of saying hi. And when you say she's saying "hoy-hoy", i think she might be saying "a hoy hoy" which is just an old school way of saying hello :) My friends have weird ways of saying hi and goodbye too. Like one always says whenever he leaves " I'm off like a prom dress."
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In all fairness my Japanese is rusty and was never too great, but I would bet that she is just using the English words. Both terms are English, 18th and 19th century English, but English.
Ahoy is an interjection, like 'Hey'.
Much like Hey it can be used as a greeting, or as a 'Pay attention over here' call.
Alexander Graham Bell actually suggested 'Ahoy-hoy' as the way people should answer their telephones. Ahoy from the sailors interjection and Hoy was from the dutch 'Hio' which just meant Hi. In the end though, Hallo, which was the greeting suggested by Thomas Edison, won out.
Interesting tidbit #1: No one used Hello as a greeting until the invention of the phone.
Interesting tidbit #2: Pirates probably never said "Ahoy Matey". When sailors used Ahoy, it was an important working word that meant "Pay attention to that big thing we are hauling or moving around and don't get hit by it." Although they did probably say Matey, it's unlikely the two words were combined in that way. It's just a phrase we made up about pirates in stories.
Sorry, I'm a nerd for words.
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