How to Say Hello in Italian: Ciao and 11 Greetings That Sound Native

Hello in Italian is ciao, pronounced CHAO, one syllable, rhyming with "wow". But here is the part most guides skip: ciao is informal only. Say it to a stranger on the street, to the shopkeeper you just met, or to someone your grandmother's age, and you have made the classic tourist mistake. It is not offensive, it is just too familiar, the way walking into a bank and saying "hey buddy" would be. The safe default with anyone you do not know is buongiorno. And one more thing worth knowing immediately: ciao means both hello and goodbye, so it works at both ends of a conversation with a friend.

The Essential Italian Greetings

Italian	Pronunciation	When to use it
Ciao	CHAO	Hi and bye, friends, family, kids, anyone you are on first-name terms with
Buongiorno	bwon-JOR-no	Good morning / good day, the safe default with anyone, until early afternoon
Buonasera	bwo-na-SEH-ra	Good evening, from mid-afternoon onwards, arriving or leaving
Salve	SAL-veh	Neutral hello, polite but not stiff, when ciao feels too close
Buon pomeriggio	bwon po-me-REE-jo	Good afternoon, correct but rare in speech, mostly radio and TV
Buonanotte	bwo-na-NOT-teh	Good night, a farewell only, when someone is going to bed
Pronto?	PRON-to	"Hello?" on the phone, and only on the phone
Come stai?	KOH-meh STAI	How are you? (informal, one person)
Come sta?	KOH-meh STA	How are you? (polite, one person)
Come va?	KOH-meh VA	"How's it going?", casual, works as a hello on its own
Come state?	KOH-meh STA-teh	How are you? (any group)
Piacere	pya-CHEH-reh	"Pleased to meet you", the standard first-meeting line

Two things worth noticing straight away. Buongiorno does a lot more work than "good morning" does in English: Italians use it as a plain hello, in shops, in lifts, at the bakery, without any thought about the sun. And pronto is a false friend for anyone who knows Spanish or Portuguese. It literally means "ready", it is what you say when you pick up the phone, and it is never a greeting in person.

Ciao, Salve or Buongiorno? The Divide Tourists Get Wrong

This is the section that matters. Italian greetings are sorted by social distance, and picking the wrong one is the single most common learner error.

Ciao is for people you already know, or people your own age in a relaxed setting. Friends, family, colleagues you joke with, children. It is warm, and that warmth is exactly the problem when you use it on a stranger.
Salve is the middle ground and the most underrated word in this article. It is polite, it commits to nothing, and it works at any hour. Walking into a shop and not knowing whether the owner is 30 or 60? Salve. It is the escape hatch when ciao is too close and buongiorno feels heavy.
Buongiorno and buonasera are the formal defaults: strangers, older people, waiters, doctors, officials, anyone in a professional setting.

Behind this sits the tu / Lei distinction, and it is what drives come stai? versus come sta?. Tu is the informal "you", Lei the polite one, and Italian uses Lei far more than modern Spanish uses usted. So:

Come stai? goes with ciao, with friends, with tu.
Come sta? goes with buongiorno, with strangers, with Lei.

Mixing them is the giveaway. Buongiorno, come stai? to a stranger is a mismatched sentence: the first half is polite, the second half just clapped them on the back.

The rule of thumb Italians follow themselves: start with Lei, and switch to tu only when they do, or when they invite you with diamoci del tu ("let's use tu"). Waiting is never rude. Rushing can be.

One small mercy: Italians are entirely forgiving with foreigners. The point is not avoiding a scolding, it is that using salve or buongiorno correctly makes people treat you as someone who knows how things work.

Time of Day: When Buongiorno Becomes Buonasera

Italian swaps its greeting with the clock, and the handover happens much earlier than English speakers expect.

Buongiorno runs from waking up until the afternoon. In the north, it often holds until around 5 or 6 pm.
Buonasera takes over from mid-afternoon. In much of the centre and south, you will hear it from 1 or 2 pm, right after lunch, while the sun is still blazing. If someone greets you with buonasera at 3 pm, they are not confused, that is normal.
Buon pomeriggio technically covers the afternoon, but almost nobody says it in daily life. Skip it: buongiorno and buonasera split the day between them.
Buonanotte is a farewell only. Unlike Spanish buenas noches, it never means "good evening" and never opens a conversation. It means the day is over and you are heading to bed. Walking into a restaurant at 9 pm, the correct greeting is buonasera.

When in doubt about the hour, salve solves it.

Pronunciation: What the Spelling Hides

Three details do most of the work.

Double consonants are genuinely held. This is not decoration. Bello and belo are two different sounds, and Italians hear the difference instantly. You physically stop on the consonant, holding it about twice as long, before releasing. Compare English "unnamed" versus "unaimed": that lingering n is the effect. It separates real pairs like sono (I am) from sonno (sleep).

C and G are hard or soft depending on what follows. Before e or i, c sounds like English "ch": ciao is CHAO, piacere is pya-CHEH-reh. Before a, o, u, it is a hard k: come is KOH-meh. Same logic for g: giorno starts like the "j" in "jam", while gatto is a hard g. An h between them forces the hard sound back: spaghetti is spa-GET-tee, never "spa-jetty".

Stress usually falls on the second-to-last syllable. Bwon-JOR-no, bwo-na-SEH-ra, pya-CHEH-reh. That penultimate beat is what gives Italian its rhythm, and getting it wrong is what makes a correct sentence still sound foreign.

This is exactly where written guides run out of road. No spelling on a page will teach your mouth to actually hold a double consonant, and reading transliterations quietly trains the wrong habits. The only fix is to hear a native say the whole phrase, then say it back out loud, several times, until your mouth stops resisting. That listen and repeat loop is called shadowing, and it is the fastest way to turn a phrase you recognise into one you can produce under pressure. It is how the Hyperpolyglot app handles every phrase: real sentences, native audio, looped until they come out automatically. Available on iOS, Android, and Web.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Using ciao with strangers. The big one. A shopkeeper, a waiter you have never met, anyone visibly older: buongiorno or salve, never ciao.
Saying buonanotte on arrival. It is a goodbye. At 9 pm you walk in with buonasera and leave with buonanotte.
Mixing buongiorno with come stai? Match the register on both halves: buongiorno, come sta? or ciao, come stai?, never a mix of the two.
Flattening the double consonants. Notte with one t, bello with one l, and you sound foreign even when the words are right.
Using pronto in person. It belongs to the phone, and nowhere else.

Bonus: How to Say Goodbye in Italian

Arrivederci (ar-ree-veh-DER-chee), goodbye, the polite all-purpose default, fine with anyone.
ArrivederLa (ar-ree-veh-DER-la), the extra-formal version, for one person you address as Lei. Slightly old-fashioned, unmistakably respectful.
Ciao, which closes a conversation with a friend just as it opened it.
A presto (a PRES-to), "see you soon", warm and open-ended.
A dopo (a DO-po), "see you later today", when you will actually meet again in a few hours.
Ci vediamo (chee veh-DYA-mo), "we'll see each other", the casual everyday favourite.
Buonanotte, only when the day is genuinely done.

Learn ciao, buongiorno, buonasera, salve and come sta? with real audio, drill them until they are reflexes rather than translations, and you can walk into any bar from Milan to Palermo and open the conversation like someone who belongs there.

Keep Reading

Language Islands -- the real-sentence method that turns greetings into actual conversations
The Easiest Languages to Learn -- where Italian sits for English speakers
The Shadowing Technique -- how to drill pronunciation until it becomes automatic