Learn English Greetings - English Greetings Explained in Detail

Hello.

Hi there.

How's it going?

Hey hey.

What's up?

How are you doing?

Hi, Bob the Canadian here.

Welcome to this English lesson on greetings.

Now, you might think this is a simple topic but it's not.

I wish sometimes that English only had the greetings

hi and hello.

I think that would make things a lot easier for people

but there are a lot of different greetings in English

and I find as I continue to teach English online,

many people do have questions

about how to answer things like what's up

or how's it going or how are you doing today?

So I thought I would take an in depth look.

I thought I would take a really good look

in this English lesson

at all the different types of greetings in English

and try to explain them in a very logical way

so that as you start to speak English

or continue to speak English,

you can use all of the greetings correctly.

(calm music)

Well, hey, welcome to this English lesson

on English greetings.

Before we get started,

please don't forget to click that red Subscribe button below

and give me a thumbs up if this video helps you learn

just a little bit more English.

So let's talk about English greetings.

I tried to analyze English greetings

and I tried to organize them

in a way that I think will make it a lot easier

for you to understand.

I think first we should talk about the simple greetings.

So the simple greetings are greetings like hi

or hi there or hello or hello there or hello hello.

Sometimes we say hello hello twice in a row.

I'm not sure why.

I think we say that to be cute.

We say things like hey or hey there or hey hey

or hey man or hey girl.

Yeah, that last one just sounded a little bit funny

but we do say all of those things

and those are definitely our simple greetings.

We also say things like good morning, good afternoon

and good evening.

So we have a lot of simple greetings.

Oh and there's two more.

If you wanna sound like a cowboy, you can say howdy

and if you wanna sound hip and cool, you can say yo.

So if you look over there,

you can see all the simple greetings.

Now, the cool thing about the simple greetings

is the statement or the greeting is also the answer.

So if someone says hi to you, you can respond by saying hi.

If someone says howdy, you can say hello.

If someone says hey man, you can say hi.

So the simple greeting also acts as a proper choice

for an answer to that greeting.

So again, if someone says hello, you can say hi.

If someone says hi there, you can say hello hello.

So all of the simple greetings that you see there,

you can also use as your response

and we should talk a little bit

about which ones are formal.

So I would say hi, hello, good morning, good afternoon,

good evening and sometimes we even say good day

although that's rare now.

Those are all quite formal.

When you start to say hi there or hello there

or hello hello, those are informal

and the informal version of good morning is just morning.

So someone will just say morning, how's it going?

Notice how I added a question there.

We'll get to that in a sec.

We'll make things more complex in just a moment.

The informal version of good afternoon is just afternoon

and the informal version of good evening is just evening.

So those are all of your simple greetings.

Divide it up into somewhat informal and somewhat formal.

By the way, yo would probably be slang

and howdy would just be something you say for fun.

So there you go, those are all your simple greetings

and by the way, one last thing.

You can always add the person's name

when you are using the simple greetings.

So you can say hi, Bob.

Hello there, Bob.

Hey, Joe.

Ooh, I was gonna say how's it going?

We're not at that part of the lesson yet though.

Hello there, Fred, how are you today?

So notice I can't help but add a question

and we'll talk about that in just a moment

but those are all of your simple greetings.

You can use it as a greeting

and you can also respond to all of those greetings

using the same greetings.

So that's your simple greetings.

(calm music)

Here's where it starts to get a little bit difficult though.

We don't just stop with hi or hello there.

We usually add a question when we are speaking English

and when we are greeting someone

and I tried to classify these questions

and I will give you some possible answers.

So often, we will start with the simple greeting.

So we'll say hey hey or we'll say hi

and then we'll add a question.

One of the common questions that we'll ask

is how's it going?

When we say how's it going,

it is the contraction of how is it going

but we don't usually say all the words.

We usually say how's it going

and some possible answers are good, pretty good,

not too bad, it's going good.

This is a question that sometimes people aren't sure

how much detail they should give

and I'll give you some information about that

towards the end of the video

but generally, if you are speaking to someone at work

or someone that you don't know that well,

you would answer with good, pretty good,

not too bad, it's going good.

All of those would be great answers.

Notice though I think you're supposed to say

it's going well.

That would probably be grammatically correct

but we actually say it's going good.

It's going good.

How's it going?

It's going good.

The next set of questions that you might ask

is you might ask how are you, how are you today,

how are you doing and how are you doing today?

So all of those are kind of the same question.

They kind of mean the same thing.

Possible answers for those questions are I'm fine,

good, I'm good, pretty good or I'm doing great.

So of those questions, how are you, how are you today,

how are you doing, how are you doing today,

those are all of your possible answers.

I'm fine, I'm good, good, pretty good, I'm doing great.

And again, keep watching 'cause I'll talk a little bit

about how much detail you will give

when you answer these questions in a moment.

The next set of questions you might ask

and remember, you usually use a simple greeting

and then you add a question to it.

So you might say hey man, what's up,

hey man, what's going on or hey man, what's happening?

So all of these questions

are almost always answered the same way.

You either say not much or not a whole lot.

So if someone says to you hello, what's up,

you most likely will say not much

or you might say not a whole lot.

I know it's kind of a funny way to answer

but generally, I would say 99% of the time

when someone says to me what's going on,

I answer by saying not much or not a whole lot.

The last set of questions that we ask

are the questions how are things or how's everything?

If someone says to you hey hey,

how's everything or how are things,

you usually answer by saying things are great

even if things aren't great

and I think that's part of why greetings in English

can be rather confusing

because we're not always honest with our answers.

So again, to review, I went over the simple greetings

and then I've added another level.

These are more complex greetings.

The complex greeting, you take a simple greeting

and then you add one of the questions.

So you could say things like morning, what's up?

You could say hello there, how are you?

You could say howdy, how are things?

So all of the simple greetings start the greeting

and then you add one of the questions afterwards

but here's the challenging part.

How do you answer these questions?

Well, it depends who you are talking to.

If my mom says what's up, I will tell my mom in great detail

what is actually happening in my life.

If my mom says how are you and I'm not feeling great,

I will tell my mom exactly how I'm feeling.

If however I'm talking to someone I don't know as well,

I would just say I'm fine, good, I'm good.

I would use all of the answers that I gave earlier,

those short, quick answers.

So again, if my sister said to me how are things

and if things weren't good,

if I was having some difficulties in my life,

not just speaking English, I would honestly tell my

my sister how things are going.

If a colleague who I had not worked with for very long

asked how are things,

I would probably just things are great.

So it's a little challenging to figure this out.

The safe thing to do is to use the short answers.

If someone says how's it going,

you should just answer and say good.

If someone says what's up, you should say not much

and then here's the last part.

When you are greeting someone, you use the simple greeting

then you add one of the questions

and then if you are answering the question,

you usually say you.

So if someone says to me hey man, what's up,

I would say not much, you?

So you can simply add the word you after you respond

and it prompts the other person to answer you.

So let me give you another example.

If someone says hi, how's it going,

I can say pretty good, you

and that prompts the person who is greeting me

to then give me an answer.

Anyways, I hope that made some sense.

I hope all of the words that I put up over here

helped you understand just a little bit more

how greetings work in English.

Thank you for watching the entire lesson.

If you are new here,

don't forget to click that red Subscribe button below

and give me a thumbs up

if this video helped you understand English greetings

just a little bit better.

I'm Bob the Canadian and you're learning English with me

and hey, if you have a little bit more time,

why don't you stick around and watch another video?

(calm music)