“Bueno?”

Earlier this morning like many times when my phone rang I picked it up and said “bueno?” (“bueno” = good, well, fine). Later when I hang up I pondered on why I just like the rest of the population in Mexico answers “Bueno” when we pick up the phone. As much as we go into depth, this term doesn’t have anything to do with answering the phone.

As a writer and a Teacher a great part of my job requires me to play detective the vast majority of times because I get bombarded with random questions such as “what is the origin of this,” “how did this get started,” “why this?,” etc, therefore it is very important to be prepared.

The first thing I decided to do was ask my students, friends and neighbors why use that word when answering the phone but unfortunately apart from some of them looking at me ackwardly with a big question mark on their heads, not one single soul knew.

Since I was unable to get to the bottom of that matter I decided to search on the wonderful worldwide web that has the answer to almost everything. After typing up different words to find an answer, something finally came up and it stated that Mexico is the only country where people use this term when they answer the phone. “Bueno” could sound abrupt, like saying? “Well, what now, what do you want?.”

It is a term which means something positive and it can also have a rude and abrupt meaning depending on how it’s used.

According to my research long ago in the 1920’s 1930’s when the telephone system came into use and technology was not too advanced, every call was made through an operator causing calls to be choppy and staticky. Therefore people had to test the line before they started their conversation to make sure the line was clear and then proceed. The operator would ask “bueno” meaning that the line was clear and communication was good to make sure everything every call had been made without running into any difficulties.

It was better to use “bueno” then “Buena.” In Mexico adjectives identify gender; “a” used at the end of an adjective describes a female. And “o” used at the end of an adjective describes a male. Keep in mind that every language has regular and irregular adjectives so in Spanish many times adjectives don’t take either infix “a” or “o.”

Nowadays there are different ways to answer the phone such as “hello,” “hola,” or “si.” It is a matter of which one each person likes or prefers. Just like Mexico each country has its own way or many ways to answer the phone. There have been times when people make fun of this which makes one think, “Have they asked themselves why they answer the phone like that in my country?”

It would be interesting to dig into each country’s word origin but it’d also be time consuming so people much rather ignore these matters than investigate them.