The King’s English is a beautiful language. Spoken across the globe, it is deemed the ‘language of the world’. Today, in a linguistic environment such as this, you have to know English to be able to communicate with your colleagues, friends from abroad, and others.
If you don’t know any English yet and want to learn, we’re here to help you.
Well, on the other hand, if you’re a beginner and/or don’t understand English, you probably didn’t quite get any of the above. Yeah. So, anyway…
Let’s start you off with a few basic (and later on a couple more complex) greetings in the English language.
Hi and hello! These two are fairly standard, colloquial, everyday greetings in the Western world. They are quite informal, and are rarely used in places of education or work. Feel free to greet your brother, sister, grocery clerk, friend, crush with a ‘hi’ or a ‘hello’.
However, if you want to greet your professor, boss or someone you don’t really know that well, you want to go with something along the lines of a good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. These greeting phrases are more formal and fit for situations where a simple ‘hi’ or ‘hello’ would not suffice.
If someone offers you candy, you say thank you. If someone offers you candy from the back of a minivan, you run. Although, if you are intensely interested in how they are feeling, you can try keeping a respectful distance and ask how are you? To this, they will probably reply with something along the lines of fine, thank you or not that great, thank you.
More often than not, if they are interested in talking to you, they will follow up their reply with a question of their own. And you or and how are you or and yourself are all fine ways to keep a conversation going. In addition, here you can add things like what’s new, what’s up, what’s going on? These are all informal ways of finding things about the person you’re talking to, or, well, merely avoid an awkward silence.
If you’re a storeowner and a customer walks through the door, you can ask them something like: may I help you? To this they will most often reply with a no, thank you (just browsing, or something to that effect), or a yes, thank you, do you have these in red?
When you’re parting ways with someone, tell to have a nice day. Also, even if you don’t really mean it and never want to see them again, you can say goodbye to them with an informal see you or see you soon. Naturally, a simple goodbye will suffice most of the time.
If you’re clumsy and have a habit of running into people, stepping on their feet, or being generally unintentionally destructive, always have an I’m sorry or excuse me at the ready. Politeness is one of the ways a society is kept stable and healthy. You don’t want to be rude to other people. Because, you know, then they’ll be rude to you and we’ll have to update this guide with words very much unsuitable for this kind of blog.
You’re walking down the road, minding your own business, and suddenly run into someone you haven’t seen in a while. Someone you like. Here you want to address them with an excited nice to see you, long time no see, how’ve you been, it’s so great to see you – and endless variations thereof. When saying your goodbyes (or hellos for that matter, depending on the culture) a hug might be appropriate.
Special occasions and holidays have greetings of their own. Let’s give you a few examples, chronologically, from January to December. You will get through New Year’s Day easily with a simple happy new year. Easter is also easy; happy Easter! Christmas comes in two forms: happy Christmas and, a greeting far more used, merry Christmas. When it’s someone’s birthday, you wish them a happy birthday (but please-oh-please, refrain from singing the dreaded Happy Birthday Song. This is where all your presents will pale away in comparison, and you’ll actually show the birthday boy/girl you care about them.) If someone you know has done something well, succeeded in something, got promoted, got a child, got a good grade – the list is endless – congratulate them. Congratulations, well done or I’m happy for you (even if you’re not, really, it’s common courtesy) work best.
There are a great number of slang English greetings. We’re going to list a couple for you to use. However, refrain from using them with anyone except your close friends and acquaintances. First of all, the ever-present yo! Yo means hello, and is an oddity in the sense that it is not to be used without an exclamation point – both in writing and in speaking. Shout your yo’s! like you mean it. Howdy… also means hello. Sup? or Wazzup? are abbreviations of ‘what’s up?’, and are fairly common among teenagers. If you’re 18+, don’t use these. Yo and howdy are fine, sup and wazzup are kind of… well, not. Some other slang hellos: Hiya! G’day, mate! Alright? What’cha (alternative spelling: whatcha, whacha, what ya)?
Although a beautiful language, to first-time learners the English language might seem very difficult to learn and almost impossible to master. However, through a bit of practice and telly, video games, news, internet, comic books, books, billboards, etc. one will soon grasp the basics and fundamentals.
We hope that this article will help intermediate and expert English users teach their children, friends or family some Basic English greetings. Or, if nothing, deepen their own knowledge of the English language.
Learn it, study it, love it. As soon as you master your greetings, you can move on to simple grammar. From there, you can easily transition into tenses, if clauses, etc.
And sooner than you think, you will open the doors to the magical world of English proficiency. Enjoy!