Can we use a reverse order in salutations? For example,
Tom, hello/hi
instead of
Hello/hi, Tom
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2Hi, @Diko. Welcome to ELU. Of course you can! But in the written form you'd probably transcribe it as "Tom! Hi! Fancy meeting you here!". Just think of "Tom!" as an initial attention-grabbing device.– FumbleFingersCommented Apr 7, 2014 at 14:05
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@FumbleFingers why not just post that as an answer?– leigeroCommented Apr 7, 2014 at 17:40
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@leigero: Because I don't really think questions at this level should be asked on ELU in the first place. And I really can't be bothered to discuss the grammatical difference between "Tom! Come here!" and "Come here, Tom!" here. I think the question should have been asked on English Language Learners anyway, but to be honest I'd have though every language would allow you to simply call out the name of someone to attract their attention, before actually saying anything meaningful.– FumbleFingersCommented Apr 7, 2014 at 17:55
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@FumbleFingers: I've just seen two questions with this exact pattern of comments from you. I still don't understand what your objective is. If you don't think a question should be answered, why are you answering it? If you think a question doesn't belong on ELU, why aren't you downvoting it? If you think the question should be on ELL, are you flagging the question appropriately so the moderators can migrate it?– MrHenCommented Apr 21, 2014 at 20:10
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@MrHen: In this particular case I don't have a very strong opinion that the question would be better on ELL. The truth is I think it's a trivial question anywhere, for the reason I gave in both comments (I assume every language has some equivalent to Hello/Hi/Hey, and therefore all speakers can reasonably say both "Tom! Hi!" and "Hi! Tom!"). In fact, I didn't closevote this particular question though, because it's always possible someone might say there's a language that doesn't work like that. Which I would find interesting, even though I don't see how that would be On Topic.– FumbleFingersCommented Apr 21, 2014 at 20:55
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1 Answer
Yes, you can reverse the order of salutations, both at initial greeting ("Kitty, hello!") and at farewell. One famous instance of the latter is in the classic (1959) country western song "El Paso," by Marty Robbins, in which a cowboy shoots another cowboy over the love of "wicked Feleena," escapes, but then is mortally wounded by a band of vengeful cowboys as he tries to return to town to see Feleena again. The final line of the song:
One final kiss and Feleena, goodbye.
answered Apr 7, 2014 at 20:56
