Greetings in Spanish: hello, how are you, goodbye, formal and informal

Buenos días, buenas tardes, buenas noches: greetings by the clock

Spanish greets by the part of the day, and the three phrases are plural: buenos días, buenas tardes, buenas noches, literally good days, good afternoons, good nights. The boundaries move with the meal times. In Spain buenos días lasts until about midday, and the tarde stretches from lunch to the evening, so in Spain buenas tardes is still said in the early evening and can last until late at night. Wiktionary's entry glosses it for Spain as good evening as well as good afternoon.

In Latin America the evening belongs to buenas noches as soon as it gets dark, roughly from six o'clock. The same phrase serves as a farewell when someone goes to bed, so buenas noches is both good evening and good night, depending on whether people are arriving or leaving.

Río de la Plata Spanish adds buen día in the singular. In Argentina and Uruguay it is the ordinary morning greeting; elsewhere it sounds literary as a hello and is mostly heard in the wish que tengas un buen día, have a nice day. Both buen día and buenos días are correct Spanish according to the RAE's Diccionario panhispánico de dudas.

When the hour is uncertain, or the speaker is in a hurry, the phrase shrinks to ¡buenas!, a short form of buenas tardes now heard at any time of day. It is friendly and slightly casual, the kind of word said on entering a small shop.

Formal and informal greetings in Spanish: tú, usted and vos

Most greetings in Spanish stay the same in every register; the question that follows them does not. ¿Cómo estás? addresses one person as tú, the informal you. ¿Cómo está? or the fuller ¿cómo está usted? uses usted, the formal you, which takes the verb form of the third person. A doctor, an older neighbour or an official is greeted with usted unless they offer tú.

A third pronoun complicates the picture. In Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and most of Central America the informal you is vos, with verb forms of its own: vos sos instead of tú eres. The Wikipedia article on voseo describes Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador as using all three forms, with vos for the closest relationships.

¿Qué tal? sidesteps the choice. It has no verb and so no tú or usted, which makes it a safe greeting for almost anyone, and it doubles as a question about an event: ¿qué tal el examen?, how did the exam go?

Regional greetings across the Spanish-speaking world

Informal greetings are where regions differ most. ¿Qué onda?, built on onda in the sense of mood or vibe, is a casual what's up in Mexico, Central America and the Southern Cone. Wiktionary lists neighbours for it: quiúbole in Mexico and El Salvador, qué más in Colombia and qué bola in Cuba. A visitor does not need to use them, but will hear them.

Chao, also spelled chau, is the casual bye. It comes from Italian ciao, which in Italian serves for hello as well as goodbye. In Spanish it is only a farewell, so a hello in that slot is hola.

Mucho gusto has a second life in Costa Rica, where it also answers gracias in the sense of you're welcome. Elsewhere it stays a reply on being introduced, as does encantado, which changes its ending with the speaker: a woman says encantada.

Writing greetings in Spanish: ¡ and ¿

Written Spanish opens every exclamation and every question with an inverted mark: ¡Hola! and ¿Qué tal? The Ortografía of the Real Academia Española requires the opening sign, which shows from the first word that the sentence is a question or an exclamation. A learner who writes Hola! or Que tal? without it has written an English sentence with Spanish words.

Adiós carries an accent on the o, from a and Dios, to God. Its plural, used as a noun for farewells, is adioses, written without an accent. The h of hola is silent, so hola and ola, a wave, sound the same.