Considering it isn't in the dictionary, I'm surprised they discussed it in English at all.

Is it used by all ages there or is it just one of those local high school inventions?

And in my English class, I learned how to revise a two paragraph thesis...what else did you do?

i live in the northeast, and if you used the word "hella" someone would likely think you're an uneducated hick.

I live in Virginia...and I agree.

That IS hella odd...and here I was thinking it was just part of Cyber/Gamer-speak...

Hooray!

We Californians are creating a new word...to the chagrin of the stuffed shirts who claim the English language is being defiled and msut be "kept pure!"

(Seriously? COME ON...English is the bastard child of about 4 or other languages, and spelling only comparatively-recently has been standardized...Chaucer and Shakespeare had a fee reign spelling-wise...maybe we should go back to that, maybe we'll get more literature and less marks off for poor spelling on tests!)

;)

@draugnar: It happned because our techaer always says 'hecka' to poke fun at the kids who say hella, and today that kinda led to this discussion.

@jmo: Well, when I was in 1st grade, all the kids were saying 'hecka', and that turned into them saying 'hella' when they were older. Adults occasionally say it too.

@jp: Wow. It's completely normal to say over here.

@KA: We also went over the list of 10 vocabulary words for this week (hella was NOT one of the words).

@CM: You're still doing vocabulary? What kinds of words, because most of my classmates can list the whole dictionary....
By the way, I'm not trying to brag...I'm just wondering.

@draugnar, I thought it was common knowledge that high school English teachers need almost no prompting to go off on endless tangents about any topic no matter how unrelated to English it might be.

@King Atom, there is a big difference between memorizing something and understanding it.

@jmo: My English teacher last year made us read twenty books from a list and had us take tests on them. Then he had us do science homework....

@jmo: And yes, I was exaggerating...like all human beings, I tend to do that sometimes...

My favorite was when my eighth grade English teacher gave our class weekly multiplication table quizzes.

Some say 'hella' in Wisconsin :P

i remember someone saying hella a few years ago. he instantly got his lip busted open.

@jmo - Well, I only took the English I was required to take and hated all but the Modern English Literature and Creative Writing classes needed to make it a major. They required English to be a major and required two specific classes and one year (two classes) of electives to fulfill the major requirements. Freshman English sucked except when we were reading Shakespeare and Dickens. Advanced Composition my Senior year sucked even worse. But Modern Lit and Creative Writing my Soph year were pretty cool. AC sucked so bad because they made you pick a topic from a hat and write a term paper on that topic. I mean, people write what they know better than some f'ing random topic from a hat. I got stuck with Electroshock Therapy (EST).

I have never heard of this word, but then I am not fluent in northern californian. What does "hella" mean?

I think it is short for "hell of a", kind of an extreme adjective. Hella wasted being really wasted.

Today I learned that technically potatoes are stems and sweet potatoes are roots. I'm sure this knowledge will carry me hella far in life. (*Insert lip-busting punch here*)

And yams, which are commonly confused with sweet potatoes, grow both in the ground and amongst the leaves of the bush.

I think that may be the most common slang invention - another word that just means "really" or "very"

Mighty
Awfully
Extremely
Criminally
Hella
Unbelievably
Fucking
Bloody


And so on. The second most common is probably some form of "good."

Anyone remember "beast"?

How about rad and tubular and da bomb.

And lets not forget phat.

@obi: Since this is an English language thread and I know of your interest in language generally, I have to pick you up on "Chaucer and Shakespeare had a fee reign spelling-wise". They had a free *rein * - it's an equestrian metaphor, not a construction derived from political rule. :-)

@FS +1 - I knew something looked funny there when I read it.

@spyman: It means really/very: ("it's hella hot") or a lot: (there's hella people here) and in rarely, yes: (Do you want to go the mall? Hella). I myself have never used it to mean yes, and I normally just use it to mean a lot.
I'm still kind of shocked that the rest of the country doesn't use it. I just assumed growing up that everyone used it.

*and rarely

Hella is for those too lazy to be cool as Mr. T. and use helluva.

Around here, hella as yes is actually "hell yeah!" and for very, it's "helluva/hell of a". If we are saying a lot, it's just "helluva lot".

Obviously, the State of California breeds attention whores.