A neighborly hello on light rail

Olá, Vizinho! Hej, Nabo! Sawubona, Umakhelwane! – Hello, Neighbor (in Portuguese, Danish, and the Ndebele language of Zimbabwe)

Who knew that I would love the Sound Transit Link light rail expansion for so many reasons? 

The obvious reasons: I left my house for a flight at just before noon, arrived at the station at 12:09, boarded at 12:15, and arrived at Sea-Tac one hour and three minutes later without having to park or navigate pick-up or drop-off.

The walk to security took all of eight minutes, and TSA was pretty chill, so I was through security by 1:29. This is wonderful insanity! Door to gate in one hour and 35 minutes from Snohomish County! Did I mention it only costs $3?

The unexpected reasons: The discovery of a neighborly ride, as well.

The crowds and excitement of previous light rail trips to baseball games and concerts meant I did not look out the window much or take in the scenery – trees, architecture, random streetscapes, a bird’s-eye view of I-5 traffic being avoided. This day's trip was even more pleasant because of the bright sunlight, and the train very quietly slid in and out of stations or across bridges.

Inside, the passenger load went up and down. College students, commuters, travelers with suitcases, and errand runners walk on and off with the ease that comes from not having to worry about getting yourself from point A to B.

Many chatted or sat reading, some rearranged shopping bags on a seat, and, of course, most looked down at cellphones. Even better than people-watching, though, was noticing the towns I had never before noticed along the route from Edmonds to Sea-Tac Airport. 

As we entered Othello, a small town between Rainier Beach and Columbia City, the flutter flags along the roadways caught my eye. "Hello, Othello," with two words I did not recognize above and below. After two or three signs, I realized the top word read “hello” in a language other than English, and the bottom word noted which language it was. Block after block, flag after flag, language after language, so many neighborly hellos!

They said hello in French, bonjour, and Korean, 안녕하세요. I tried to read the Armenian, Բարեւ, and Filipino, kamusta, as well as the Farsi, سلام, mostly unsuccessfully, but still felt the hello. I smiled at the Hawaiian “aloha” and wondered if I had missed the Maori Kia ora or Samoan talofa. We glided out of the city before I could catch any more.

It got me wondering. How many ways are there to say “hello” in this world? We go to Sea-Tac to travel to places near and far, to meet people different from ourselves, to see things we had not before imagined. I know how to say hello in a few languages, Mandarin Chinese (你好 [Nǐ hǎo]), Spanish (hola), French (bonjour), German (hallo), Norwegian (hei) – pretty much for each of the 36 or so countries I have visited so far.

But there are more than 7,000 languages spoken in some way, shape, or form today. In the 195 recognized countries, neighbors say hello to each other in at least 150 different official languages.

Fancy a trip to Botswana? Dumela! Burundi? Bonjour. Egypt? مرحبا (marḥabā). Kenya? Hello or Jambo. Hej to your Danish friends and tere to those Estonians. Olá in Portugal and Brazil.

Thanks to light rail and the citizens of Othello, I am inspired to learn how to say hello in as many languages as possible.