Korean Corner is a new segment of the United Kpop page, aiming to offer use-able Korean. Today we’re covering Korean greetings!
The term 안녕하세요 (An-young ha-seh-yoh) translates to “hello”, and is a formal way to greet someone who is older than you, or someone you do not know very well. You can respond by also using the greeting, possibly adding someone’s name as the prefix. For example, X, 안녕하세요. Try spotting the phrase in this compilation video of Big Bang introducing themselves!
You can also shorten 안녕하세요 to 안녕 (an-young), but this is far more informal and can only be used when speaking to someone younger than you or someone you know very well! When meeting someone for the first time, you can also follow up your 안녕하세요 with 만나서 반갑습니다 (Man-nah-suh Ban-gap-seum-ni-da) which translates to “pleased to meet you!”
But, 안녕 can also mean “goodbye”. There are two common ways of saying this in Korean:
- 안녕히 계세 (An-young hee geh-seh-yoh) which is used when you are leaving.
- 안녕히 가세요 (An-young hee gah-seh-yoh) which is used when you are staying and the other person is leaving.
As you can see, 안녕 is an extremely versatile phrase! You can hear it on the final 2NE1 track, which you can listen to here:
A casual way of saying “see you later”, would be 나중에 보자 (nah-joong-eh Boh-jah). That’s it for this time! We’ll be covering introductions next month. For now, 나중에 보자!
