Chinese Hellos: Essential Greetings for Every Situation

Hi there!

(... see what I did there?)

You're thinking in the right direction. If you want to learn Chinese, greetings are a good place to start, and no greeting is more important than the standard "hello" of acknowledgement.

In this blog post, we'll walk through some of the most common ways you can bid someone hello.

[Table] Six basic ways to say Hello in Chinese

If needed, you can also check out our refresher on Chinese tones. If you want to learn greetings beyond a simple hello, you should check out our blog post on Chinese greetings.

1. Hello → 你好 (nǐ hǎo)"

Literally: you good
Sounds like: "nee how"

This is the most generic greeting in Chinese though that doesn't mean it's not a useful phrase to initiate contact with someone or just spice up a greeting to a Mandarin speaker. However, this is far from the most common way that Mandarin native speakers greet one another. It's seen as slightly formal.

Note: When two third tones directly follow each other, as in "nǐ hǎo", the first one is pronounced as a second tone. As a result, and as you can hear in the recording, "nǐ hǎo" is actually pronounced as "ní hǎo". This is called tone sandhi.

2. Greeting people with titles → Pronoun/Noun + 好 (hǎo3)

You'll notice that the above greeting (níhǎo)你好 is formed with a pronoun (nǐ)你 and the character (hǎo)好. This is actually an established construct!

For example, you can also say (nínhǎo)您好, replacing the less formal (nǐ)你 with the more formal as a more formal to get a more formal hello.

Extending this same idea further, you'll also regularly hear the greeting (dàjiāhǎo)大家好 which contains (dàjiā)大家 (everyone) + (hǎo)好 (good), meaning "Hello, everyone."

If the person you are talking to has a certain title, you can follow this same construct, attaching (hǎo)好 to their title. For example, to greet a teacher, you can say (lǎoshī)老師(hǎo)好. This consists of (lǎoshī)老師 (teacher) + (hǎo)好 (good), yielding "Hello, teacher."

3. Hi (loanword) → 嗨 (hāi)

Literally: hi
Sounds like: "hi"

If you want to keep things very short and sweet, then this simple loanword of the English "hi" is perfect. This is a casual and personable greeting.

4. Hello (loanword) → 哈喽 (hā lou)

Literally: hello
Sounds like: "ha low"

While we're at it, there's also the loanword for "hello," which is rendered closer to "haa low" in Mandarin. This is considered to be slang.

5. Hey (loanword) → 嘿 (hēi)

Literally: hey
Sounds like: "hey"

And keeping up the theme of loanwords, we have 嘿 (hēi). This one is used much like 嗨 (hāi); it's a nice simple and casual greeting.

6. Hello? / Yes? (Phone greeting) → 喂 (wéi2)

Literally: hey
Sounds like: "way"

If you call someone on the phone, or receive a call, you can use this to greet the other person and confirm that you hear each other. This is a standard greeting used no matter the environment or type of call.

(Naturally, you'll only use this when talking on the phone; don't use it when you greet people in person.)

Ok, now you've learned some Chinese hellos. Now what?

If you're serious about learning Chinese, we've got you two courses that will bring you from Zero to Stumbling Through Native Media in about six months.

You'll start off with our Migaku Fundamentals course, which will walk you through the pinyin:

From there, you'll learn how tones work:

And after you've gotten a handle on Chinese pronunciation, you're ready for the Migaku Chinese Academy: a data-driven course that adapts to your personal performance to teach you the ~1,500 words and ~300 grammar points you need to have an 80% chance of understanding any random word you come across in Chinese media.

A few things make this course special:

At a pace of ~10 words per day, it'll take about 6 months to finish both courses.

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The most important thing you need to remember if you want to learn Chinese...

Hello is an important word. You can't go wrong by going out of your way to learn it. Ideally, though, you shouldn't be going out of your way to learn Chinese.

Anyway—now that we've learned how to say hi, it's time to say goodbye.

Good luck, friend 🫡