Does "We spoke" mean "We said hello"?

Evelyn writes:
I have been searching an English teacher, to answer a question about the use the English word "spoke" past tense of "speak". I must say all my co-workers have a different opinion about how this word is being used and we need some type of clarification if you may. My fiancé Marcus approached me and said that he had came across a mutual friend of ours. The conversation went like this:

Marcus: I saw your roommate out in the hall

Eve: Oh yeah, what did she said?

Marcus: We spoke

Evelyn: I know that, but what did she say?

Marcus: We spoke

When Marcus said the sentence "we spoke", he wanted me to understand by it that they had greeted each other. He said that when you say the words "we spoke" it means that they said "hello" to one another.

I tried to explain to him that when using the sentence "we spoke", it does not necessarily means that you said hi or hello. "We spoke" means that there was an interchange of words whatever those might have been. It is the past tense of speaking not a definition of a greeting. To an extent he is right about the fact that they spoke to one another but it does not define what they had spoken about.

Am I supposed to assume that when told "we spoke" it means " we greeted each other"? Or is that just letting the other person know that there was an interchange of words between two or more parties, not necessarily saying that they greeted each other.

What an interesting question!

"To speak" does mean to talk together or converse. But in the example you give, I would (like you) expect Marcus to say "We spoke about the weather" or some other topic. His use of "spoke" as a synonym for "greeted each other" sounds like a shift in meaning.

These shifts in meaning are sometimes local, and become part of a local dialect. In American English, a "bluff" is a kind of steep cliff or riverbank; in Canadian English, it's a clump of trees on the prairie. In other cases, the shift is universal: once, "fond" meant "foolish," but now, in all English dialects, it means "affectionate."

So it may be that Marcus is changing the usual meaning into something different. I hope your argument with him wasn't too serious...it would be sad to learn that now you and he aren't speaking!

Comments

[Alex17pat]

More of a connotative difference: “spoke” usually implies formality (as mentioned elsewhere in this thread. It also tends to imply a listener/audience (A spoke with B)
Talked can also mean those things, but on its face it usually just means someone said something (past tense). Can imply a listener/audience as well, but not as readily as spoke https://wordmaker.info/how-many/spoke.html