Lesson Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to ItalianPod101.
My name is Desyrée but you can call me Desy.
Il mio nome è Desyrée, ma potete chiamarmi Desy.
In this video, we are going to learn together how to say hi in Italian. So Italian greetings!
I saluti.
The easiest one that you probably know already is
Ciao.
"ciao," it just means "hi, hello.”
You can say that to people that you meet for the first time or people that you meet on the street and you're just talking, but if its someone like your teacher or your future boss you may want to be a bit more formal and say buongiorno:
Buongiorno.
Good day, if it's day, if it's daytime.
Usually, okay, in theory it's supposed to be fine until 1 p.m. from which then you switch to
Buon pomeriggio.
Good afternoon.
or
Buonasera.
Good evening.
Businesses that are kind of conservative, like maybe old shops with people that sell traditional products, they would switch to Buonasera immediately after 1pm, even if it’s stI'll bright outside and don't use the Buon pomeriggio in between but, yeah, it's just a formal way to say “hi”.
Sometimes, instead of buongiorno, you wI'll hear buondì, where dì means giorno.
It's stI'll formal though so don't worry, you can use that.
I like it more. It’s more like hey, buondì.
I don't know, I really like the accent at the end, maybe. That's why. It sounds more cheerful to me.
Buondì.
Of course you can go with the hey or Ehilà which doesn't need to have a real Italian word and that is so easy but I would say that, if you say hey, you feel like you need to say the name at least of the person that you know because that's informal, right?
Just say "hey" it's not something that you can use with your teacher, again.
So maybe you need to go, like "hey Giulia, long time no see," but if you don't remember the name, something really really useful and that you wI'll hear sometimes is:
Ehi, carissimo!
Or
Ehi, carissima!
or
cara, caro,
which is just like "dear," and "carissimo" is just like "extra dear."
Like you know, of course, it's something that you use with someone that you know already.
So if it's people that you have never seen before, just stick to buongiorno and you'll be fine.
Don't forget though, that on the phone you don't start with ciao or buongiorno, or your name, but you say pronto, which literally means "ready." So you just pick up the phone with
Pronto!
then I go,
Ciao, sono Desy!
Oh, carissima! Come stai?
The reason why we say pronto is because we kept it from when we used services to connect people, like you know, when technology wasn't where it is today, we had to go through switchboards and operators that would connect people from one side to the other, right? The guy in the middle would ask the first one and the other one if they were ready, so they said "ready," "ready," and then they were connected. So the first thing that you heard was pronto and that's why we stI'll use pronto.
I know that in English it’s common to say things like "How are you?" "Fine, fine.", even to people that you don't know, like in the shop in Italy, we don't really do that, like not in shops, for example, with people that you have never seen before, but we do use that when we meet people that we know already or when we are introduced to someone new, and in that case you can say,
Come va?
"How are things going?"
Come stai?
"How are you?"
or
Tutto bene?
"Everything’s fine?"
Which yeah, works kind of the same but don't say that in shops.
Continuing our journey through the day after buonasera, which is "good evening," there is buonanotte.
So "good night," but we don't say that when we meet, it's only when we say goodbye.
Okay, so buonanotte is just "good night." like you're sure that the other person is just going home and sleeping.
Okay, because otherwise, it's buona serata.
So like, “have a nice night from here on.”
Or buona giornata.
“Have a good day from here on.”
Of course, you don't have to go so specific, you can just say ciao ciao as a goodbye or arrivederci, just "goodbye," or "see you soon," a presto, a presto.
And yes, sometimes we wI'll hear "ciao" even three times or more, especially on the phone because we want to fI'll the time up until we actually put it down.
So we're gonna be like "ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao, ciao".
And yeah, there are people that go on forever and so that's also something that you could hear.
Also don't forget that for us it's common to kiss on the cheeks when we meet someone. Not for the first time, in that case we would just go for a hand shake, but actually even when you say goodbye after you spend some time together, even if it was for the first time, it's fine to kiss on the cheek and it's usually two kisses, not one, not three.
Some people do just one or three, but that's not the standard, the standard is two, you go like this and that. You don't want to make too much of a sound though and also sometimes its just basically the cheek touching softly its not really a kiss, that's something I wouldn't do, especially with people that you don't really know. So yeah, keep that in mind. We just go like, hey ciao and that's it. Especially girls, we do that a lot, but men do that too. Like, girl girl, man man man, girl.
Everyone, I think you now have a wide range of greetings but I also want to teach you something else.
When you hear something like Ciao like that, it's not really a great thing.
It's more like "Yeah, sure, whatever, kind of.”
So keep that in mind too and the same goes with Buonanotte.
Since, as I told you, it's not something that you say when you say goodbye, it may be used to say “and that's it.”
For example, let's say I don't really know which bag to buy and I have been discussing it with my friends for so long, I'm like the red one or the black one, or I don't know, and at some point, I just go like “Okay, you know what? I'll buy the black one and good night.”
“Okay, you know what?...
Compro quella nera e buona notte!
which means, “We wI'll not talk about this again.! That's it, that's the end.”
It can be really convenient and funny to use it, like I decided to do that, e buonanotte.
Ho fatto così e buonanotte.
So to sum up, we have
Ciao!
Ehi, carissimo
or
Ehi, cara/carissima
Buongiorno
Buon pomeriggio
Buona sera
If you don't want to decide which one to use between buongiorno, buon pomeriggio, or buona sera, you can also use salve, which is another formal way to just say "Hello!"
Salve!
Arrivederci
or
A presto
or
Buonanotte
at the end.
So yeah, let me wish you all a good day or a good night from now on.
Buona giornata
or
Buona serata
And remember, if you want to speak Italian and learn in the fastest, easiest and most fun way just go to ItalianPod101.com and sign up for your free account. You wI'll find our complete learning program with real lessons from real teachers. Don't forget to like and subscribe and I'll see you soon. Bye!

Comments

Hide