Get Creative with Casual English Greetings

edited by Ivana Recmanova & Kyriako Sheridan

One of the first things you become familiar with when starting to learn English is greetings. They are truly important as they open up the vast majority of conversations. Good morning, good evening, hello, you probably know all of these by now.

However, these greetings are formal and that means you are going to use and notice them in a sort of polished context. If you go to the streets of London, New York or Canberra, you will hear many more greetings among friends, but no one will tell them, let’s say, to their teachers or bosses.

“Howdy!” Also, “Howdy, cowboy!”

“Howdy” is an abbreviation of “How do you do?” which you can ask when you want to know how your friend is or just when you want to greet them. This abbreviation is mainly used in the southern states of America and is associated with cowboy culture.

“Howaya, mate?”

“Mate” is another word for a friend which is widely used in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. (It could also be a herb which makes delicious tea, but that doesn’t belong here now.) “Howaya” is short for “How are you?” and Australians are particularly notorious for abbreviating everything.

“Ello, yello”

“What’s up?”

It means more or less “What are you/we up to?”, “What’s going on?”, etc. You probably know the phrase “What’s up with you?” which we say when we are worried about someone or when we think someone is doing something weird. However, “What’s up?” doesn’t mean anything worrisome like that.

“Hi guys! Hello folks! Hiya peeps! Hey homies!”

“Hey y’all!”

“Y’all” is the contracted form of “you all” and is popular in the southern part of the United States. You’ll also see it stylized as “ya’ll”, but many people argue that it’s a misspelling.

In addition, as English coexists with other languages, some English speakers practise so-called code-mixing, which means they use several languages at the same time. This means that you may be greeted with “aloha” in Hawaii, “hola” in the South-West US, and so forth.

Apart from greetings, there are some informal words used for groups of people.

“Oh yeah, cool story bro.”

“Bro” is another word for “brother”, but it’s not used just for your sibling — it may be applied to another male friend in general. The female equivalent of “bro” is “sis”. Or do you want to greet your whole family? You may say “fam” as a short word.

Engramo — Educate yourself to proficiency.

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