Hello and goodbye

Hola works at any hour and with anyone, from a friend to a shop assistant.

The first Spanish word most people learn is hola, and it carries you a long way. It works at any time of day, with friends and strangers, in Spain and in Latin America. Written down it usually takes exclamation marks, ¡Hola!, and the h is silent, so it sounds like OH-lah. This unit covers hello, the most common ways to say goodbye, and how to choose between them.

Saying hello

Hola on its own is a complete greeting. Friends often add a question straight away: ¡Hola! ¿Qué tal? (Hi, how is it going?). Another short greeting heard all day in Spain and in the River Plate countries is ¡Buenas!, a clipped form of buenas tardes or buenos días that works at any hour. The Instituto Cervantes lists hola and the time-of-day greetings among the very first things a beginner learns to say. The next unit covers those time-of-day greetings.

Saying goodbye

Adiós is the general goodbye. Hasta luego (until later) is the everyday one, heard in shops, offices and among friends. Hasta mañana (until tomorrow) is for people you will see the next day, and hasta pronto (see you soon) for someone you expect to meet again before long. Nos vemos (we will see each other) is relaxed and friendly. Chao is an informal goodbye; the RAE dictionary says it came from Italian ciao. In Argentina and Uruguay it is usually written chau.

You can join a goodbye to a time-of-day phrase: Adiós, buenas noches. Or add a day of the week: Hasta el lunes (until Monday), Hasta el jueves (until Thursday). The pattern is hasta, the word for until, followed by the time you expect to meet again.

Greeting a group

When you join several people, ¡Hola a todos! (hello, everyone) greets the whole group at once, and Adiós a todos or Hasta luego a todos works the same way when you leave. Saying hello as you walk into a small shop and goodbye as you leave is a common courtesy in Spanish-speaking countries. Unit 8 says more about why greetings carry weight.