How!

[Koontz John E]

On Sat, 10 Apr 1999 VOORHIS at BrandonU.CA wrote:
> Just to complicate things, a widespread Cree greeting is ta:nsi and a
> widespread Ojibwe one is a:ni:n.  Both of these are literally 'how?' and are
> assumed by native speakers to be short for 'How are you?', 'How are things
> going?' or the like.  So did the popular Indian English greeting "how!" arise
> as a translation of these Cree and Ojibwe words, possibly to be passed on
> thereafter from English to Siouan, Iroquoian and Algonquian languages (+ Hopi)
> as hau, etc., or was hau borrowed from one of those languages into English as
> "how" which was then translated into Cree and Ojibwe?  Note that other Cree and
> Ojibwe greetings are borrowed, Cree wa:ciyi from English 'what cheer?' and
> Ojibwe po:s^o: from French bon jour.

I wonder whether some sort of question word, especially a manner question
word, is not typical in greetings?  This is certainly true in Europe,
along with h-words (hail, hals, hola, hey, etc.).  Of course, in English,
there's some overlap in the two categories, thanks to the evolution of PIE
*kw there!  Two greeting formulae in Omaha-Ponca, said to be women's
forms, but also apparently used between the sexes, are EaN' niN=a?  'how
you-are Q' and Ea'thaN niN=a?  what's-wrong you-are Q.  It's easy to
interpret the first of these as English influence, but I'd want to know
more about the general pattern of greeting questions across the world
before being very positive of this.

Unfortunately, I don't know, off the top of my head, of any reference on
the subject of greeting formulae.  It's hard to believe, however, that the
subject can have been entirely overlooked.