4 Ways to Say Hello in Korean ๐Ÿ‘‹

Korean ํ•œ๊ตญ์–ด
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Do you know how to say hello in Korean?

Youโ€™ve probably heard of ์•ˆ๋…• [annyeong] already, whether with your Korean friends or by watching a K-dramas, but did you know you cannot say it to someone older than you, or even worse, your boss?!

Korean is an intricate language with different levels of formal speech, so the type of โ€œhelloโ€ you use differs based on who youโ€™re speaking to:

์•ˆ๋…• [annyeong] โ€“ Informal Hello
์•ˆ๋…•ํ•˜์„ธ์š” [annyeonghaseyo] โ€“ Formal Hello
์•ˆ๋…•ํ•˜์‹ญ๋‹ˆ๊นŒ [annyeonghasimnikka] โ€“ Very Formal Hello
์—ฌ๋ณด์„ธ์š” [yeoboseyo] โ€“ Saying Hello on the Phone

Letโ€™s say you want to say hello in Korean to a colleague that is younger than you, do you know what to say?

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PS - We explain all the differences between the multiple ways to say hello - How to Say Hello in Korean // Itโ€™s Not As Simple As It Sounds - Flexi Classes Korean

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Super helpful, thank you!! I wonder where the Korean hello for answering the phone comes from, itโ€™s so different to the others

I also need to learn about when to use the more formal versions in Korean, in the UK you can be pretty casual with most people (even at work) but I think this is the opposite in Korea - at least, according to my Netflix K Shows :joy:

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Goodbye is super similar to Hello in Korean also.

This makes it easy to get started. The only confusing bit is there are two that sound very similar, and the meanings are likewise.

์•ˆ๋…•ํžˆ ๊ฐ€์„ธ์š” (annyeonghi gaseyo). This means goodbye and is used when you are staying, but the other person is leaving.

However, when you are leavingโ€ฆ

์•ˆ๋…•ํžˆ ๊ณ„์„ธ์š” (annyeonghi gyeseyo).

Very subtle difference :upside_down_face:

However, I learnt a new one on my trip to Seoul which isโ€ฆ

์ž˜ ๊ฐ€์š” (jal gayo) - it means go well and reminds me of ๆ…ข่ตฐ in Chinese which is used very commonly in Mainland China. It can only be used when someone else is going, not you though.

I like to use this one :smiley:

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์•ˆ๋…•ํ•˜์„ธ์š” (an-nyeong-ha-sae-yo) is also a common way to say โ€˜Good Morningโ€™ to someone in Korean!

Although if you run into your boss/teacher and want to wish them a more formal good morning, you could go with:

์ข‹์€ ์•„์นจ์ž…๋‹ˆ๋‹ค (jo-eun ah-chim-ip-ni-da)

Thereโ€™s a lot more ways to wish someone a good morning in Korean in this blog post :point_down: thereโ€™s also a quiz you can try at the end, hopefully you guys will do better than I did :eyes: :laughing:

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Great post. My next trip to Korea is in the next few months. This is a great tool to brush up.

Thanks Hannah :smiley:

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How was your time in Seoul, were you confident in greeting/saying hello to Korean people?

Iโ€™m also curious to know whether you heard people using ์•ˆ๋…• [annyeong] or ์•ˆ๋…•ํ•˜์„ธ์š” [annyeonghaseyo] more often :eyes:

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Great trip thanks, Hannah.

I was all good with the absolute basics, but beyond that, itโ€™s tough going.

I learnt so many new dish names but forget them already so thatโ€™s just another excuse to go back and push forward more!

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Sounds like a great excuse to keep going back to restaurants in the name of learning Korean!