Say "Hello" in Greek today (with audio)

Greek gives you a different hello depending on who you are talking to, what time it is, and whether you are arriving or leaving. None of it is difficult, but picking the wrong one is the fastest way to sound like a phrasebook.

Tap the play button on any phrase below to hear it read aloud, then say it back. That is the whole method.

Both mean hello, and the difference is only who is in front of you. Σου is one person you know. Σας is either several people or one person you owe some respect: a shopkeeper, a colleague, anyone much older than you.

Both double as goodbye. You can walk into a bakery with γειά σας and walk out with the same word.

If you are unsure how formal to be, this is the greeting that never misfires. It is neutral, slightly old-fashioned, and always correct with strangers.

These three carry you through a whole day. Καλημέρα runs until about noon, καλησπέρα from the afternoon onwards, and καληνύχτα only ever means goodbye.

A greeting in Greek usually comes with a question attached. Have one answer ready and the conversation stays open instead of stalling.

Three of them, in the order you are likely to make them. The first is reaching for γειά σου with a stranger. It is the singular form, and to a shopkeeper, a taxi driver or anyone visibly older than you it lands the way first-naming someone you have just met lands in English. Nobody will correct you. They will simply file you as a tourist.

The second is καληνύχτα. It looks like the evening partner to καλημέρα, and it is not. It means good night in the sense of goodbye, said on the way out or on the way to bed. Walking into a taverna at nine in the evening and announcing καληνύχτα tells the room you are leaving before you have sat down. The word you want on arrival is καλησπέρα.

The third is timing. Greeks move off καλημέρα earlier than an English speaker expects, roughly from lunchtime, and καλησπέρα covers everything from then until the end of the night. Using καλημέρα at three in the afternoon is not wrong so much as conspicuously foreign.

The greetings on this page work everywhere Greek is spoken. What changes is what comes after them. Cypriot Greek is a different dialect rather than an accent, and while every Cypriot understands standard Greek, the everyday register around the greeting is not the same. Ίντα κάμνεις is the Cypriot how are you, where Greece says τι κάνεις.

Χαίρετε is the one to keep in your pocket for anywhere you are unsure. It is neutral about the time of day, neutral about how well you know the person, and it is the greeting you will hear most from people who are being professionally polite.

Greeks do not answer the phone with a greeting. They answer with ναι, meaning yes, often with the rising tone of a question, or with εμπρός, which is the traditional telephone hello and has no other use. Both sound abrupt written down and are completely ordinary spoken.

In writing the register splits. A text to a friend opens with γεια and nothing else. An email to someone you do not know does not use any of these greetings: it opens with Αγαπητέ or Αγαπητή, the Greek equivalent of Dear, and the ending changes with the gender of the person you are writing to.

Learn γειά σου, γειά σας and καλημέρα this week and you can greet anyone in Greece correctly. Add χαίρετε for the moments you hesitate, and καληνύχτα for the end of the night.

The rest comes from hearing them in place. Photograph the signs, the menus and the shop windows around you, and let the words arrive with the context already attached.