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Why do Americans ‘tell’ you Good Morning? Isn’t it a greeting rather than information?

This is a quote from a book I am currently reading:

She went through to the kitchen to tell her children good morning before leaving for work.

This isn’t the first time I have heard this and wondered if anyone could explain why tell might be used rather than wish.

tchrist
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JGB
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    Which Americans are these? Please provide the context. I encourage you to take the site [tour] and review the [help] for guidance on writing good, answerable questions. – choster Apr 18 '16 at 16:21
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    I think that Americans (and other English-speakers) are likely to wish you a Good Morning as a greeting (as opposed to telling you Good Morning). –  Apr 18 '16 at 16:23
  • Thank you for the edit. It has certainly made the question clearer. However, I'm still having some trouble picturing what a good, non-opinion-based answer to this question would be like. Perhaps in addition to "why," you could ask "when" this expession started to be used, and "where" it is used (is it confined to Americans, or are there other regional varieties of English that use it?). This would encourage people to post more fact-based answers, and it seems like these questions are closely connected to what you want to know. – herisson Apr 20 '16 at 06:11
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    +1 could you please give the title of the book you are reading, the author's nationality would be nice to know. Thanks! – Mari-Lou A Apr 20 '16 at 06:15
  • I searched online and didn't find the exact quotation, but I did find this: She reached over to tell her children good morning, and they weren't there I also have a few qualms about that sentence. – Mari-Lou A Apr 20 '16 at 07:32
  • I believe that "good morning" is a contraction of "May you have a good morning", or possible "May God give you a good morning". There are many phrases like this, that originally had a religious aspect which they have since lost, like "Goodbye" which comes from "God be with you". http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/1505/what-is-the-origin-of-the-word-goodbye – Max Williams Apr 20 '16 at 07:59
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    @MaxWilliams the OP isn't asking why Americans say "Good morning", but why the reporting verb "tell" is used in this instance. Although, come to think of it, I suppose you could be referring to this. – Mari-Lou A Apr 20 '16 at 08:18
  • @Mari-LouA Ah, i should have heeded the "unclear question" warning eh :) – Max Williams Apr 20 '16 at 08:19
  • I remember coming across such usage in a book on conversational AmEng. I'd imagine it's chiefly colloquial and nonstandard. – Elian Apr 20 '16 at 09:52
  • https://books.google.fr/books?id=pUghrDokKpsC&pg=PA225&lpg=PA225&dq=%22tell+someone+goodbye%22+%22say+goodbye+to%22&source=bl&ots=T5WFzKHJKd&sig=XjSXSEo7F1jfnnSL-iEV_SM6eOc&hl=fr&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjauYfe-ZzMAhWlJ8AKHXa3BoMQ6AEISzAM#v=onepage&q=%22tell%20someone%20goodbye%22%20%22say%20goodbye%20to%22&f=false – Elian Apr 20 '16 at 09:57
  • This too might help, https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=tell+your+mother+good&year_start=1700&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctell%20your%20mother%20good%3B%2Cc0 – Elian Apr 20 '16 at 10:28
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    "tell" only seems to appear in latter half of the 20th C, and still lags far behind "wish" or "bid". ngram – Neil W Apr 20 '16 at 10:38
  • "Well, you tell your mother good morning for me and tell her I wish her ... good guessing." https://www.google.fr/search?q=%22tell+your+mother+good%22&biw=1024&bih=672&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiN5Y6vg53MAhVLthQKHVkWCTQQ_AUIBygA – Elian Apr 20 '16 at 10:41
  • But "say good morning to him" wins: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=say+good+morning+to+him%2Ctell+him+good+morning%2Cwish+"him+good+morning%2Cbid+him+good+morning&year_start=1900&year_end=2000&corpus=17&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Csay%20good%20morning%20to%20him%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ctell%20him%20good%20morning%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cwish%20him%20good%20morning%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cbid%20him%20good%20morning%3B%2Cc0 – Mari-Lou A Apr 20 '16 at 18:11
  • Lon Simmons, a longtime broadcaster of baseball games for the San Francisco Giants and (later) Oakland Athletics, had as his signature home-run call "...and you can tell it good-bye!" So perhaps the author of your book grew up as a Giants or A's fan and internalized the "telling" of welcomes and farewells. – Sven Yargs Apr 20 '16 at 21:41

2 Answers2

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This is my view, incurred upon reading your sentence:

Good Morning is often used (by parents) as the first phrase to say to their children in the morning, more as a regular habit than as a wish.So often, tell is more appropriate decription of their tone. Moreover, parents (like mine) , those who go early to work, often use the phrase to wake their children up from bed, so often the soft tone of wishing won't actually work!

Qwerty
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  • @Querty But that doesn't explain why it is tell. You tell someone some information, or you tell them what to do - but you don't tell them a greeting. – TrevorD Apr 21 '16 at 00:04
  • @TrevorD :I mentioned that Good Morning is often used by parents to wake children up from bed, thats why it is told to them. It is not used as a greeting, just a replacement for the word wake up . – Qwerty Apr 21 '16 at 04:52
  • @TrevorD : If you like my answer,please be kind enough to upvote. – Qwerty Apr 21 '16 at 04:54
  • @Querty Sorry, but I don't like it for the reasons already stated. I still don't understand why you use "tell", and have already explained why in my first comment: I don't see that "wak[ing] children up from bed" is telling them anything: certainly not in BrE. – TrevorD Apr 21 '16 at 20:54
  • @TrevorD : Is it not informing a sleeping child "wake up, is already morning!" – Qwerty Apr 22 '16 at 04:11
  • @Querty The Q. was not about telling a child to wake up: it was about telling them "Good Morning". In BrE, we might tell a child to wake up; we might tell them it's morning; but we would not say tell them "Good Morning", because Good Morning is a greeting - not an item of information. – TrevorD Apr 24 '16 at 22:09
  • It may be colloquial usage in some region or another. Who is the book's author? Is the action set in a particular place? – phoog Apr 26 '17 at 04:16
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The author uses the word "tell" because of the wording of the rest of the sentence. If it had been "a good morning" then it would use the word wish, but since the word "a" has been omitted, the word tell makes more sense. Basically, the author uses "good morning" as a quote from the character without using quotation marks: "...to tell her children, 'good morning'" Also, the word 'tell' doesn't always mean you're giving information, sometimes it's simply used as another way of saying "say to." For context, the quote above is essentially equivalent to "...to say to her children 'good morning.'"

simon
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