Hi everyone,
I'd like to know how you greet each other in your country (US,UK,Australia,New Zealand, South Africa) and perhaps in the city or region you live in.
Our Japanese textbooks are poor in explaining how native English speakers greet one another.
The most common example is " Hi, how are you? " and perhaps that's never wrong although it's usually abbreviated as " Hi, how're you? ".
I'd really appreciate it if you could give introduce some greeting examples that's most accustomed to your country, as well as region/area.
In my culture (Australia), we do say 'Hi. How are you?' a lot. But we also often say 'hey' instead of 'hi' and, instead of 'How are you?', we often say "How's it going?"
Of course, there are many other ways too, but personally these are the ones I use most often.
Great question, by the way!
Informally, "What's up?" is still popular among friends anywhere in the US.
In parts of the northeast US, it's very common to hear "H'ya doin'?" It's too much effort to actually pronounce "How are you doing?" for us :)
i have the same to add, except its important to note that its never a question; its just a statement: "heyhowyadoin". This often confuses foreigners who think it is a question and by the time they start explaining how they are doing, the one who asked has already passed them, and is now several yards behind them. The correct is answer is not "good", its to reply with "heyhowyoudoin".
Also S'up is common too, standing for "what's up"(which you will notice is also a question originally), which is also replied to with a "s'up".
