Everywhere you go in Sweden, people “hej” at you. If you don’t know that “hej” means “hello” in Swedish, you might be slightly confused as to why everybody is trying to get your attention. Because that’s what we use “hey” for in English, among many other things, right?
“Hej!” in Swedish doesn’t have any of the negative English “hey!” connotations. Instead, it’s a multi-purpose greeting used by practically everyone in the country. It sounds awfully familiar, doesn’t it? Like the kind of word you’d only say to those with whom you have a personal relationship. Yet in Sweden that word managed to cross from being just an interjection in casual speech to a national greeting.
And how did that happen?
