Russian · vocabulary in use
Russian greetings, from hello to goodbye.
Every Russian conversation opens with a register decision: привет or здравствуйте is the ты/вы choice said out loud. Here is the whole toolkit, greetings, the how-are-you exchange, and the farewells, with stress marked and a note on when each one belongs.
Aurélien CuvelierAug 15, 2026The greetings
The opening move is a register choice: the first two rows decide everything else.
The how-are-you exchange
Как дела is a real question in Russian: an answer is expected, and it is rarely a beaming one.
The farewells
Most partings are wishes, and every wish stands in the genitive: the grammar section below explains why.
The grammar hiding in the greetings
The greeting IS the ты/вы decision. Russian has two words for you, and every opener declares which one you have chosen: привет announces ты, здравствуйте announces вы. Get the pairing wrong and the sentence contradicts itself. When unsure, open formal; Russians will offer the switch (можно на ты) faster than you expect.
The farewells run on an invisible verb. Спокойной ночи, счастливого пути, всего доброго: every parting wish stands in the genitive case because желаю (I wish you) is silently governing it. Say the full sentence once, желаю тебе спокойной ночи, and the mysterious endings become ordinary grammar.
Real speech clips the long forms. Здравствуйте compresses to здрасте in fast casual speech, and the first в is silent even in careful speech: zdrastvuyte, never zdraVstvuyte. Understanding the clipped forms is half of understanding street Russian.
The two classic traps
First: доброй ночи and спокойной ночи are farewells, said at parting or bedtime; greeting someone at night still takes добрый вечер. Second: как дела is not English small talk. It is a real question, asked only when there is standing to ask, and it expects a real answer: the culturally fluent reply is нормально, not an American amazing.
The deep dives on each phrase
Every phrase with its register, every word with its case
Russian greetings: common questions
What is the most common Russian greeting?
Привет among friends and здравствуйте everywhere else. The pair maps exactly onto the ты/вы distinction, so choosing a greeting is choosing a register. When in doubt, здравствуйте is never wrong; being over-formal costs a smile, being under-formal costs more.
Do Russians ask how are you like Americans do?
No, and the difference trips both sides. Как дела is a real question asked of people you actually know, and it expects a real answer: нормально (okay) is the standard, honest reply. Asking a stranger, or answering with enthusiastic superlatives, both read as foreign.
Why is it спокойной ночи and not спокойная ночь?
Because it is a wish, and wishes stand in the genitive: an invisible желаю (I wish you) governs the phrase. The same grammar runs счастливого пути (safe travels) and всего доброго (all the best). One silent verb explains a whole family of endings.
How do Russians actually say goodbye?
Пока informally, до свидания formally, and a rich middle: до встречи (until we meet), увидимся (see you), до завтра (until tomorrow). On the phone, давай closes half of all casual calls, to the eternal confusion of learners who know it only as the word for give.
Written by
Aurélien Cuvelier Founder, NuanceDeck
Aurélien Cuvelier builds NuanceDeck: the app, and the verification pipeline behind its dictionary. Every entry is grounded in the official TORFL lexical minimum and a 20,000-word frequency corpus, and every example sentence passes a certification review before it ships.
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