I recently discovered that the Russian informal phone greeting, алё, precisely coincides with the Turkish one. When you hear "алё," you absolutely cannot tell whether it is a Russian or a Turk who is answering. I am unable to spot even a slightest difference in the pronunciation.
If you never heard how Turks answer the phone, just watch the last few seconds of this video: https://youtu.be/923YxvQiJ1I?t=189 . Isn't the coincidence with the Russian алё striking?
My question is this: How come the Russian and Turkish informal phone greetings precisely coincide? Not only the word, but also the exact pronunciation.
I tried to find an answer in Google, but found only the following two things:
(1) The French have a more or less similar phone greeting, allô. You can hear it here: https://youtu.be/i77tOWettrI?t=14 . As compared to the Russian greeting, the French version has a harder л and a shorter ё, which is also less stressed than in Russian.
(2) The formal Russian phone greeting, алло, seems closer to the German phone greeting Hallo than to the French allô. The Russian double л in алло sounds like the English double l in hello and very different from the soft single л in алё.
It seems possible that the Russians started with алло and then themselves developed алё as an informal greeting, not borrowing it from French, or borrowed the informal алё from Turkish. After all, many Turkic people live in Russia, especially the Azerbaijani people, who have cultural and business ties with Turkey. Many Russians regularly spend their vacations in Turkey.
I am curious whether the Russians developed алё themselves (from алло) and, if not, where they borrowed алё from - French or Turkish.