Russian phrases
Russian Greetings: Hello, Goodbye and How Are You?
Привет is only the beginning: here is the formal, casual and genuinely natural greeting system.
Published 28 July 2026
Привет is only the beginning: here is the formal, casual and genuinely natural greeting system.
Published 28 July 2026
At nine in the morning, Доброе утро is lovely. At an uncertain hour, Здравствуйте saves you from doing social astronomy. Russian greetings are less about collecting alternatives and more about choosing the right distance: привет for people in your informal circle; здравствуйте for the adult you do not yet know.
Привет suits friends, peers and relaxed settings. Здравствуйте is the dependable greeting for strangers, older people and formal encounters. Доброе утро, добрый день and добрый вечер divide the day, although здравствуйте works without checking the clock.
Как дела? is casual and invites a brief answer such as хорошо, нормально or ничего. Как вы? is more formal. Russian speakers may answer more honestly than the automatic English fine, but a first exchange still does not require a medical report.
Пока is casual goodbye. До свидания is neutral and polite. До завтра means until tomorrow, while увидимся means see you. Matching the register at the beginning and end makes a small vocabulary sound socially confident.
| Привет! Как дела? | Hi! How are things? |
| Здравствуйте. Как вы? | Hello. How are you? — formal |
| Спасибо, хорошо. | Thanks, good. |
| До завтра! | See you tomorrow! |
With friends, Как дела? invites a real but usually compact answer: хорошо, нормально, ничего, не очень. In a formal exchange, Как вы? is possible, though many service encounters stop after the greeting. Match the energy you receive. If someone offers one word, you need not deliver the week’s complete emotional weather.
Здравствуйте on its own is neutral. Здравствуйте, Анна Сергеевна is formal and personal. Привет, Саша is warm and ordinary. Russian first names have common short forms, but do not invent one for a new acquaintance; follow the form they use. A greeting plus the right name often sounds more natural than adding another memorised sentence.
Close the English column and say Привет! Как дела? from memory. Change one useful detail, then answer yourself with Здравствуйте. Как вы?. Record the two lines once at normal speed. Listen for the stressed syllable and for any ending you swallowed. Now wait five minutes and rebuild both lines without reopening the page. This is a small test of Russian greetings, but it measures the useful thing: can you retrieve the language when the prompt is no longer sitting in front of you? Finish by writing one sentence that is true about your day. Tomorrow, begin with that personal sentence before looking at either model. Change the person, time or place and listen for the point where the Russian form must also change. Keep the correction beside the sentence, not in a separate rule list. After three days, use the strongest version as the opening line of a voice note. If it arrives without rehearsal, the pattern is starting to belong to you.
Can I say привет to a shop assistant? It may sound too casual unless the shop and relationship are clearly informal. Use здравствуйте.
What does ничего mean as an answer to Как дела? Literally nothing, but here it means roughly not bad or okay.
How do I answer Как вы? Хорошо, спасибо is a safe short answer. You can return the question with А вы?
Practise one formal entrance and one casual one, including the goodbye. Register is easier when you rehearse the whole little exchange. See what is coming and get a launch update.