Greetings in Vietnamese: xin chào, chào with kinship words, thank you

Chào plus a kinship word: the real hello

Chào means to greet, and it works for arriving and leaving alike. Wiktionary's usage note is blunt: chào is the only greeting that is genuinely used, and it is rarely said on its own. A word for the other person follows it, chào bạn, chào chị, chào bác, and a speaker may put their own pronoun in front, as a child does in cháu chào chú ạ, I greet you, uncle.

That second word is a kinship term chosen by age. Wikipedia's article on Vietnamese pronouns lists the everyday set: anh for a man a little older than the speaker, chị for a woman a little older, em for someone a little younger, cô and chú for people somewhat younger than one's parents, bác for someone a little older than one's parents, and ông and bà for elderly men and women. With strangers in formal settings the choice narrows to anh, chị or cô, ông and bà, and the speaker calls themself tôi. Bạn, friend, is the usual word for young people around twenty.

Getting the term right is part of the greeting. Wiktionary notes that a child who leaves out the proper pronoun may be thought ill-mannered, and parents prompt them with chào bác đi con, say hello to your auntie. When age is hard to judge, the formal set from the same article is the fallback: anh or chị for younger and middle-aged adults, ông or bà for the elderly.

Xin chào: correct, polite and a little stiff

Xin chào joins xin, to ask, with chào. Wiktionary calls it a modern coinage, absent from pre-modern documents, and describes it as rather artificial as a greeting: it is mostly a direct translation of English hello, common on television, at formal events and on interface labels. Newsreaders and hosts soften it further to xin kính chào, and formal occasions use kính chào.

This makes xin chào the right choice on a sign, in an email to a stranger or in front of an audience, and a slightly odd one across a market stall. Among the greetings in Vietnamese it is the one a visitor learns first and the one native speakers use least in daily life.

Nothing in Vietnamese changes with the clock. Chào buổi sáng, good morning, exists, but Wiktionary marks it as a phrase of translations and language courses that can sound awkward when meant seriously. People meeting in the morning ask whether the other is up already or slept well, or simply say chào. Chúc ngủ ngon, good night, belongs to the same group of translated phrases, though families do say it with a kinship word, chúc mẹ ngủ ngon, good night, mum.

Cảm ơn or cám ơn: two spellings of thank you

Thank you has two forms one tone apart. Cám ơn is the older one, attested since the 17th century and the only form in old dictionaries, including the Đại Nam quấc âm tự vị printed in Saigon in 1895. Cảm ơn appeared later under the influence of the learned reading cảm ân of the Chinese 感恩. According to Wiktionary, a dictionary published in North Vietnam in 1967 was the first to record cảm ơn, and the Từ điển tiếng Việt edited by Hoàng Phê adopted it as the standard form in 1992.

Both are correct. Cảm ơn is the prescribed standard; cám ơn remains the predominant spoken form, above all in central and southern speech, and the usual written one among Vietnamese abroad. The usual answer is không có gì, it's nothing, with không có chi as a variant. Xin lỗi covers both I'm sorry and excuse me, so it opens a question to a stranger as well as an apology.

Ăn cơm chưa? Greetings in Vietnamese that are questions

Between people who know each other, a question often does the work of hello. In an essay for VnExpress in January 2025, Đinh Võ Kiều Oanh names ăn cơm chưa?, have you eaten yet?, and đi đâu đấy?, where are you off to?, as greetings in Vietnamese whose answer hardly matters. They are asked so that the other person replies and a conversation starts; from an older relative, ăn cơm chưa? can also be an invitation to stay for the meal.

Chưa is the particle that turns these into questions about whether something has happened yet, the same chưa that answers not yet. A short account of one's day is a perfectly good reply. A learner asked ăn cơm chưa? is not being offered dinner by default, and does not need to report a menu.

Saying goodbye: chào, tạm biệt and particles

Among the greetings in Vietnamese, goodbye is mostly chào again, with the kinship word and often a final particle: chào nha!, bye!, chào anh nhé. Wiktionary's note on tạm biệt says the textbook goodbye is almost never used in conversation; it is a word of translations, of formal farewells and of language teaching, built from the Sino-Vietnamese 暫別, a temporary parting. Hẹn gặp lại, see you again, appears in the formal farewell xin chào và hẹn gặp lại and on its own between friends.

Younger speakers borrow from English. Bai is listed as informal slang for bye, and hế lô as a casual hello among millennials and younger people. On the phone, the French-derived a-lô is the standard opening.

Tones carry the meaning in every one of these words. Chào carries the low falling huyền tone, written with the grave accent. The Vietnamese alphabet shows how the five tone marks sit on the vowels, and the Vietnamese words hub explains the six tones.