Hella
When I first arrived in San Antonio, Texas for Air Force Basic Training 20 years ago, people knew exactly where I was from because of one word I kept saying.
Everything was hella good. Hella this, hella that; it was hella cool. One flight member pointed out this "hella" reference, saying you must be from Northern California. I never knew I kept saying hella. All of a sudden, I started to pay attention to how many times I mentioned "hella" and this made me hella aware of saying hella so many times.
Others soon caught onto this hella content, and soon began emphasizing their nouns such as she was hella fine, or that food was hella good. 20 years later, hella made the list as one of the most influential words of the 2000's. This hella reference first surfaced in Northern California, particularly the Bay Area, in the early 90's.
It's a word that young North Cali natives incorporated into their dialect without ever noticing this, like what we hear from people using, "You know what I'm saying, you hear me, or you feel me bro" type of responses. The hella slag emerged as a 90's creation that somehow has no exact trendsetter. It is entirely a slang that we remember, a nostalgic part of our time in the 90's growing up near the Bay.
Remember the G-Line? Before the Internet got big, people would communicate on their phone using recordings across a G-Line. People took on aliases such as G-Smooth, AG and other names. Back then, everyone was on the go and didn't sit at a computer to post content on a Facebook, or send a tweet out on Twitter. Even Google was not even thought of yet, just a mere idea that eventually evolved a few years later. All we had was AOL, Yahoo and websites that took quite an effort to locate if these were not developed on a generic domain name.
Hella takes us back to the past, a moment of reflection on the 90's. We don't remember using hella much, because we made it innate - free flowing. If we got into the Delorean and traveled to the 90's and listened to us having conversations, there is a hella good shot that we will hear the hella slang thousands of times. Hella is like "like" when we get nervous.
If you say "like" after almost every word, then you know that you're embarrassed, shy or struggling to find that next word. This usually happens in large crowds, in front of a girl you like and/or while giving a speech in high school or in a college class. Hella has evolved and is now a natural way of describing something to make it really great.
In recent time, Jack In the Box is advertising Hella-peno on billboards. Our culture is aware of this "hella" reference as a replacement for "very" and something that is "excellent" or "really" good. It's all hella good bro. I hella miss Cali bro. Hella and bomb have that same impact in our culture. She is the bomb, dude. That was some bomb-ass crab!
I lived in Florida for a year. In a Florida workplace, I kept saying dude this, dude that. People knew I was from California, and imitated this "dude" word. I started to say dude after every request or reference. It was like saying sir or ma'am. Yo bro I need that salmon on the fly, dude. Whenever I talked to a single person, I mentioned dude after every sentence. It was my way of flossing California as a hella cool place to visit.
I made instant friends from scratch. These friends wanted to visit California to experience a hella good time. One little girl noticed my California license plate and asked if I knew the Kardashians? She said that it's her dream to visit California and go to Hollywood. California is a trendsetter. People aspire to build their dream in California and make a name for themselves. Hella started right here in Northern California. Isn't that hella dope?
What is your hella story? Do you still use hella today?
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