Thursday, April 13, 2006

Greetings



One of the first things I learnt here is to greet , greet , greet!! There are many rules to greetings in Hungarian. Example, when we see our neighbour(s) or when entering a shop, there are 3 different ways to greet :-

... to someone younger than us (anytime of the day) - singular "Szia! {see-ya}" , plural "Sziasztok {see yas-tok}" basically means "Hello !"

... to someone older than us - "Jó reggelt! {yow raig-gailt}" , "Jó napot! {yow naw-pot}", which means "Good morning!" and "Good day! /Good afternoon!" respectively ..

...Then there's special greetings to women (with highest regard) - "csokolom {cho ko-lom}" ..usually to women elder than us .

I still often mixed-up the greetings and sometimes just say "Hello!" instead :). The funniest would be when you see a group of people (old,young,women altogether) infront of the apartment and you start greeting all 3 different greetings at once ..Phew !:D

What about your town/ city /Country ?

12 comments:

Kelvin said...

Kia Ora (Hello) from a blogger down under in New Zealand. Looking at the map, it looks like no one in NZ has started a daily photo blog yet. Maybe I should, when I get a camera.

Kris said...

Kia Ora, Kelvin ! Yes, would be great to to see NZ in the map! :)

midnitebara said...

Thats the first nigongo I learned to, greetings.

Ohayou gozaimasu = good morning
konichiwa = good afternoon
konbanwa = good evening

Adrian said...

In Ireland, people speak English and it's "hello", "hi", and maybe "good morning / afternoon / evening" if being more polite.

In the Gaelic Irish language, hello is "Dia dhuit" which literally means "God to you" and you reply with "Dia is Mhuire dhuit" which means "God and Mary to you" but doubles as "hello".

"Fáilte" means "welcome" and the traditional greeting for Ireland is "cead míle fáilte" which means "A hundred thousand welcomes".

Nuno said...

different kinds of "hello" in Portuguese:

"Olá"
"Ora viva"
"Boas"
"Oi"
"Tás bom pá"
...
(very long list acording to zone, age,etc)

"bom dia" - good morning
"boa tarde" - good afternoon
"boa noite" - good evening

Sam said...

Thanks for the lesson - I will try to remember...Hello!
LOL

G Fraser said...

Greetings in Scots Gaelic (with rough pronunciations):
Latha math (laa ma) - good day
Madainn mhath (maten va) - good morning
Feasgar math (feskur ma) - goor afternoon/ evening

Oidhche mhath (aykhe va) - good night

somebody said...

in Afrikaans we say "hallo or hi" and in Sotho it is "dumela"

Nicola said...

Thanks for the language lesson! In German you'd say 'Hallo' or 'Guten Tag' (the second one is more formal).

Jenny said...

Let's see... depending on the circumstance: hello, hi, hey, how's it going... all the obvious ones!

Sebastian said...

Hi.
in Danish we say:"Hej" meaning just Hi!.
More formal is "God dag" litteraly "Good day".
"God morgen" is "Good morning"
/Sebastian

Kris said...

Thank you everyone for participating :)..I have no idea that some of you have the many rules in greeting as well , very interesting indeed :)

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