Lesson Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome back to ItalianPod101.
My name is Desiree but you can call me Desy.
Il mio nome è Desiree ma potete chiamarmi Desy.
In this video, we're 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, which 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 it's 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 buona sera, good evening.
Business that are kind of conservative, like maybe old shops with people that sell traditional products,
they would switch to buona sera immediately after 1 p.m. even if it's still like 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 will hear bondi, where di means giorno, it's still formal though, so don't worry, you can use that.
I like it more, it's more like hey, bondi, I don't know, I really like the accent at the end maybe, that's why, sounds more cheerful to me, bondi.
Of course, you can go with the hey or heyla, which doesn't need to have a real Italian word in that, so it's 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 and 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 will hear sometimes is hey, carissimo,
or hey, carissima, or cara, caro, which is just like dear, and carissimo is just like oh, 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, pronto, which literally means ready.
So you just pick up the phone with pronto, then I'll go with ciao, sono Desy, oh, carissima, come stai?
And the reason why we say pronto is because we kept it from when we used like 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 one and the other 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 still use pronto.
I know that in English, it's common to say things like how are you, fine, fine,
like even to people that you don't know, like in the shop.
In Italian, 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,
so buonanotte is just a good night, like you're sure that the other person is just going home and sleeping,
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 you will hear ciao even three times or more, especially on the phone,
because we want to fill the time up until we actually put it down,
so we're going to be like ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao ciao,
and yeah, there are people that go on forever, 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 handshake,
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 it's just basically the cheek touching softly,
it's 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,
so 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 say ciao, like that,
it's not really a greeting, 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, 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 buonanotte,
which means we will not talk about this again,
that's it, that's the end.
It can be really convenient and funny to use,
like I decided to do that e buonanotte,
ho fatto così e buonanotte,
so to sum up, we have ciao,
hey carissimo or hey 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
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and I'll see you soon, bye!

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