How to say hi and bye bye in Vietnamese language?

Question

How to say hi and bye bye in Vietnamese language?

Answer 1

Unfortunately, the word for "hi" and "bye" in Vietnamese are one and the same: "Chào". If you want, I've heard people use "bye bye" instead of "chào" to signify "good-bye".

To cattie: It's correct that a pronoun is usually attached after the word, but then we would have to teach the "honorifics" system of Vietnamese, wouldn't we?

Answer 2

I agree with Cattie.  Vietnamese don't just say Chào.  You MUST (I stress MUST here) append the person's name or title.  I have NEVER (I stress NEVER here) heard a Vietnamese saying just Chào.  No, we don't need to (though that would be nice) to teach the entire honorifics system to non-Vietnamese but a few titles would help.  One only needs to know ông (Mister), bà (Misses), cô (Miss) ... it's not perfect but the locals won't mind that coming from a foreigner.

Answer 3

Most of the time, your greeting is accompanied by a pronoun, depending on the context of your relationship with the person you are greeting. It's rarely just "Chào."

Here are some examples:

Chào anh. (Used to greet a guy.)

Chào cô. (Used to greet a lady.)

Chào bạn. (Usually used by youth to greet one another, especially if they don't know each other yet.)

To MiasmaMoon: That's true; I agree. Vietnamese is a complex language. I didn't want to simplify it too much. I've always been taught by my parents that blank greetings are rude. =)

Answer 4

The persons above are absolutely right.

Vietnamese is a hard language. It doesn't have some specific sentences for some specific situation like English. That usually depends on the person.

Adults say "chào" (anh/chị/em/cô/chú/bác/ông/bà... depends) but teenagers just say "hi" and "bye" like Americans. English is popular nowaday, right?

Answer 5

How about Xin Chau as a generic hello and Tam Biet for a similiarly generic goodbye ? Thats usually how I greet people I don't know while I'm in Vn.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. My 13 month old son speaks better Viet than I do. lol