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)