Hella (word)

Hella is a slang intensifier word commonly used by young people in Northern California, but also elsewhere in Canada and the United States. It is believed to be a contraction of "Hell of a". [cite news
url=http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/magazine/28ONLANGUAGE.html
title=Kiduage
author=William Safire
date=November 28, 2004
publisher=The New York Times
accessdate=2008-02-13]

It often appears in place of the word "really", "a lot", "totally", and in some cases "yes". Whereas "hell of a" is generally used with a noun, according to linguist Pamela Munro, "hella" is primarily used to modify an adjective such as "good". [cite news
url=http://128.11.143.113/specialenglish/archive/2002-12/a-2002-12-18-2-1.cfm
title=Campus Slang
date=December 19 2002
publisher=Voice of America
accessdate=2008-02-13]

According to lexicographer Allan A. Metcalf, the word is a marker of Northern California dialect, as well as the similar word "hecka". [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=SsMUCl5j8X4C
title=How We Talk: American Regional English Today
author=Allan A. Metcalf
year=2000
publisher=Houghton Mifflin Reference Books
isbn=0618043624] According to Colleen Cotter, "Southern Californians know the term ... but rarely use it." Sometimes the term "grippa" is used to mock "NorCal" dialect, with the actual meaning being the opposite of hella. [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=RSkUXkI14pAC
title=USA Phrasebook
author=Colleen Cotter
year=2001
publisher=Lonely Planet
isbn=] A commentator at UC Davis notes that using the term in the presence of "SoCalers" can elicit a range of extreme reactions. [cite news
url=http://media.www.californiaaggie.com/media/storage/paper981/news/2006/11/16/Opinion/Angela.Ruggiero-2464207.shtml
title=The ongoing 'hella' battle
author=Angela Ruggiero
date=November 16 2006
publisher=California Aggie
accessdate=2008-02-12]

Earliest studies of the term

One of the earliest linguists to study the term was Mary Bucholtz of the University of California, Santa Barbara. In the early 1990s, she collated materials from an urban high school in the Bay Area, and found that "hella" was "used among Bay Area (and more specifically Oakland, CA) youth of all racial, ethnic, and socio-economic backgrounds and both genders, also used for describing the dankest of the dank marijuana (i.e. that weed is hella dank)". It is a synonym of the slang meaning of "wicked" and "mad". As it was not recognized as profanity, the students were able to use it repeatedly in production of the class yearbook. In Bucholtz's view, the term "signals an orientation to coolness". Although she notes the later national usage, she believes that is a largely urban fad (which peaked just before 2000 or 2001), but in California it will continue to be a "very stable regional marker". [cite book
url=http://books.google.com/books?id=Pb4BZ7QtfgAC
title=A Cultural Approach to Interpersonal Communication: Essential Readings
author=Mary Bucholtz
chapter=Word Up: Social Meanings of Slang in California Youth Culture
editor=Leila Frances Monaghan, Jane E. Goodman
year=2006
publisher=Blackwell Publishing
isbn=1405125942] Bucholtz later directed [cite web
url=http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/cv.html
title=Mary Bucholtz CV
publisher=University of California, Santa Barbara
accessdate=2008-02-13] an undergraduate project that was published in the "Journal of English Linguistics" in 2006 titled "Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal?: The Perceptual Dialectology of California". [cite journal
url=http://eng.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/4/325
title=Hella Nor Cal or Totally So Cal?: The Perceptual Dialectology of California
author= Nancy Bermudez, Lisa Edwards, Victor Fung, and Rosalva Vargas
volume=35
issue=4
publisher=Journal of English Linguistics
accessdate=2008-02-13
doi=10.1177/0075424207307780
year=2007
journal=Journal of English Linguistics
pages=325]

Nationwide spread

By 1997, the word had spread to hip hop culture, though it remained a primarily West Coast term. [cite news
url=http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E2D61739F936A35752C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all
title=Shorties and Scholars Agree, the Word Is Rap
author=Lynette Holloway
date=January 5 1997
publisher=The New York Times
accessdate=2008-02-12] With the release of the 2001 No Doubt song "Hella Good", one Virginian transplant in California "fear [ed] the worst: nationwide acceptance of this wretched term." [cite news
url=http://www.readthehook.com/Stories/2002/05/16/essayonhellabygentry.html
title=I Hate Hella, All Montagues, and Thee
author=David Gentry
date=May 16 2002
publisher=The Hook
location=Charlottesville, Virginia
accessdate=2008-02-13]

In the "South Park" episode "Spookyfish", which was the 1998 Halloween special, the character Cartman repeatedly used the term "hella" to the annoyance of the other characters [cite web
url=http://www.tv.com/south-park/spooky-fish/episode/2444/recap.html
title=Spooky Fish Recap
publisher=TV.com
accessdate=2008-02-13] , which contributed to its currency spreading nationally. [cite news
url=http://www.csuchico.edu/jour/catbytes/s99/slang.htm
title=Yo, yo, yo ... Catch this Slang is used to unify the masses
author=Kristin Carmichael
date=Spring 1999
work=CatBytes
publisher=California State University, Chico
accessdate=2008-02-13] "You guys are hella stupid" is one of the phrases spoken by a talking Cartman doll released in 2006. [cite web
url=http://www.i4u.com/article6942.html
title=Must Have: Talking Cartman Action Figure
author=Luigi Lugmayr
date=October 28 2006
work=I4U News
accessdate=2008-02-13] The Sacramento-based band Hella chose its name for the regional association; Zach Hill says "It's everywhere up here.... We thought it was funny, and everyone says it all the time." [cite news
url=http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=VDBB&p_theme=vdbb&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0FE6CF3366EEB29E&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM
title=Hella: Slang name for a band that's hard to pigeonhole
author=Jeremy Scherer
date=October 15 2003
publisher=Inland Valley Daily Bulletin
accessdate=2008-02-14]

References

External links

* [http://www.doubletongued.org/index.php/dictionary/hecka/ hecka] at the Double-Tongued Dictionary