VALE | Farewell & Goodbye

With the passing of great Tom Hafey in 2014, many readers asked why so many newsreaders were expressing: Vale Tommy Hafey. What does VALE mean? "Vale"is Latin for "Goodbye". VALE means farewell, or goodbye in Latin. In classical Latin, the word is pronounced with the initial V sounding like an English W. In Medieval (or Church Latin), the initial V is pronounced as a V. It must be understood that there was no V sound, per se, in Classical Latin, the V is pronounced as a U, or W. So, taking a look at another Latin thingy, the man whom you know as Julius Caesar is spelled in Classical Latin as Ivlivs with the initial letter being an i, and Caesar is pronounced much the way it is in German, Kaiser.