What does 声をかける mean?

Question

I found this sentence in a book for kids.

ライオンがずぶ濡れのヤギを見ました。ライオンはヤギに『うちに入って、雨やどりをしないか』と声をかけました。

There are many meanings on the internet but i can't quite understand its meaning.

Thank you all :)

Answer 1

「声{こえ}をかける」

is quite different in meaning from

「話{はな}す」

in that you can 話す to/with someone for hours if you wanted, but you cannot 声をかける to someone for longer than a minute or two.

That is because the basic meaning of 「声をかける」 is "to strike a conversation", which means that it refers to the first couple of phrases or sentences uttered.

Thus, if you just said "Hi!" to another person, you already 声をかけた to him/her.

Answer 2

～に声をかける simply means talk to in a normal mild tone in that context.
It can also mean to mention an event to someone to stimulate their participation or just to invite them.

Answer 3

In this case, it simply means to call out to. The lion called out to the goat.