Hey everybody, what’s goin’ down? How ya’ doin’ today? Did you know that people decide whether you are fluent or not within five seconds of meeting you? How many different ways to say “hello” do you know and use, and did you know how important it is to give a fluent first impression?
Although you probably have learned the standard “hello/ hi/ how are you?” the great majority of English books and schools don’t teach you the entire spectrum of greetings, nor the dynamic aspects of even a simple question like “how are you?”
How you introduce, present yourself, and connect with people in your target language is one of the most important, yet underestimated, aspects of proficient and confident communication.
Think about it. You start every interaction with a greeting to connect with the person, and how you do this will either be a source of confidence or insecurity. Fortunately, greetings are not a difficult thing to learn.
With the help of this guide, your ability to say a simple “hello” in many different ways will be a huge source of confidence, inspiration, and it will give you a great chance to practice your pronunciation. This article will also help you identify them in the music you listen to, in the TV you watch, and all across English speaking pop-culture.
A. Greetings You Probably Know (a complete explanation)
1. HEY—An informal greeting often used by itself (“Hey!”) with enthusiasm to express surprise (or when you don’t know/ remember somebody’s name). You can use it with just the name of the person you are greeting, like “Hey Chad!” “Hey” is also used to get somebody’s attention: “Hey John, can you give me a hand?”
2. HI/ HELLO—These formal/ informal greetings are simple and easy to use. They are generally combined with another greet: “Hi, how are you?”
3. HOW ARE YOU?/ HOW YA’ DOIN’?— “How are you doing?” often loses the “are” and pronounces “you” as “ya” to form “How ya’ doin’?” as a colloquial alternative (similar to Joey Tribianni from “Friends” – see clip). Also note that “doing,” like many “ing” words in the present continuous, doesn’t pronounce the “g.”
http://youtu.be/43wkqM27z2E
The proper response is “I’m doing well” (well is an adverb) but a lot of native speakers commonly make the colloquial mistake, “I’m doing good.” Good is a noun, and the literal meaning of this “I’m doing good” is the opposite of “I’m doing evil.” But don’t stress it because Natives make this mistake all the time.
4. (GOOD) MORNING/ AFTERNOON/ EVENING—Good Morning is both formal and informal. “Good afternoon” and “Good Evening” are generally more formal. It’s very common to take the “Good” off to just say “morning”/ “afternoon”/ “evening” (note: “good night” is a goodbye.)
Now that you’ve expanded your understanding of greetings you probably already know, part 2 of this article will cover a whole new list of dynamic expressions, including:
5. How’s it goin’/ How (are) you goin’?
6. What’s goin’ on?/ What’s goin’ down?
7. How’ve you been?
8. What are you up to?/ What’ve you been up to?
9. Long time no see
10. Yo!
11. What(‘s) up?/ What up?/ Wazzup?
If you wanna learn more about “dynamic English skills,” be sure to read Part 2, and I invite you to download a free copy of the popular Real Life English e-book, “101 Word You’ll Never Learn in School.” We’ve also written a great article on greetings called “23 Ways to Greet Somebody in English.” See you guys next time!
Justin Murray was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, but he currently lives in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He is the founder of the hot new ESL blog, Real Life English. Real Life English also has a free international language learning community on Facebook, with nearly 4,000 members from more than 50 countries.
