Greetings in Portuguese: oi, olá and tchau
The greetings in Portuguese are oi and olá (hi, hello), bom dia (good morning), boa tarde (good afternoon), boa noite (good evening, good night), tchau (bye) and adeus (goodbye). Which of them you hear depends on which side of the Atlantic you are: in Brazilian film and television dialogue oi is the commonest greeting, and in subtitles from Portugal olá is said more than twenty times as often as oi. Below are the greetings with how to say them, when to use each, and the counts that show the two countries apart.
The greetings in Portuguese
| Greeting | Say it (Brazil) | Meaning | Use it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oi | oy | hi | the everyday hello in Brazil |
| Olá | oh-LAH | hello | everywhere; the usual hello in Portugal |
| Bom dia | bom JEE-a | good morning | until midday |
| Boa tarde | BOH-a TAR-jee | good afternoon | from midday until dark |
| Boa noite | BOH-a NOY-chee | good evening; good night | after dark, as hello and as goodbye |
| Tchau | chow | bye | the everyday goodbye in Brazil |
| Adeus | a-DEH-oos | goodbye | the usual goodbye in Portugal |
| Até logo | a-TEH LOH-goo | see you later | everywhere |
| Alô? | a-LOH | hello? | answering the phone in Brazil |
The pronunciations are Brazilian. In Brazil d and t before the sound "ee" become "j" and "ch", which is why dia sounds like "JEE-a" and noite like "NOY-chee".
Brazil and Portugal greet differently
The subtitles of the two countries show it clearly.
| # | Word | Meaning | Brazil, per million | Portugal, per million | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | oi | hi | 642.1 | 49.3 | also “sorry?” in Brazil |
| 2 | olá | hello | 548.1 | 1154.3 | |
| 3 | tchau | bye | 176.6 | 18.1 | |
| 4 | adeus | goodbye, farewell | 160.5 | 289.7 | |
| 5 | alô | hello (on the phone) | 152.5 | 19.4 |
- Hello: Brazil says oi most, at 642.1 times per million words, with olá close behind at 548.1. Portugal says olá 1154.3 times per million words and oi only 49.3.
- Goodbye: Brazil's commonest goodbye is tchau, at 176.6. In Portugal tchau is rare, at 18.1, and adeus is the ordinary goodbye, at 289.7.
- The phone: Brazilians answer with alô, at 152.5; in Portugal it is rare, at 19.4.
Oi is a ceiling in Brazil's count, because Brazilians also say oi? to mean "sorry, what did you say?". More of the differences between the two countries are in Brazilian vs European Portuguese.
The time-of-day greetings, bom dia, boa tarde and boa noite, are two words each and cannot be counted from single-word lists: dia, tarde and noite are also "day", "late" and "night".
Where the greetings come from
- Tchau is Italian ciao, borrowed, and it is the reason Brazil's goodbye sounds like Italy's hello. Ciao itself began as a Venetian phrase meaning "your servant".
- Oi may come from Old Tupi, an indigenous language of Brazil, according to Wiktionary, which marks the origin as possible.
- Alô is the English hallo, borrowed for the telephone.
Answering a greeting
- Oi, tudo bem? — Hi, all good? (Brazil; the answer is tudo bem or tudo bom)
- Olá, como está? — Hello, how are you? (Portugal, or formal)
- Bem, obrigado. E você? — Fine, thanks. And you? (a woman says obrigada)
- Prazer. — Nice to meet you.
- Até amanhã! — See you tomorrow!
- E aí? — What's up? (Brazil, informal)
Obrigado and obrigada are counted in which language says thank you most, and oi and olá are compared with the greetings of other languages in hello and goodbye, ranked.
Learn them in a sentence
Greetings are the first lesson of the free Portuguese course, Verbavia (our own course), which teaches Brazilian Portuguese with a recording of each word. Both oi and olá are among the thousand words Brazilian films say most; the hundred said most of all, almost none of them greetings, are explained in the 100 most common Portuguese words. Other everyday sets: family members in Portuguese, colours in Portuguese and the days of the week.
Sources
- Wiktionary: oi, tchau and alô, for the meanings and origins.
- The Brazilian and European figures are from the separate FrequencyWords lists for Brazilian Portuguese (
pt_br) and European Portuguese (pt). - The counts are from OpenSubtitles 2018 (Lison, P. & Tiedemann, J., 2016, aclanthology.org) through Hermit Dave's FrequencyWords lists, content licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, github.com. They are computed by
scripts/frequency_thousand.pyand printed from its output rather than typed.