How to Say Hello in Portuguese: Olá, Oi and Brazil vs Portugal

Hello in Portuguese is Olá, pronounced oh-LAH, and it works in every Portuguese-speaking country. But if you are learning Brazilian Portuguese, the word you will actually hear all day is Oi, pronounced OY. Brazilians use oi constantly, with friends, in shops, on the phone. In Portugal, oi exists but sounds abrupt to some ears, and olá carries the everyday load. That split runs through everything below, so this guide marks what belongs to Brazil, what belongs to Portugal, and what works in both.

The Essential Portuguese Greetings

Portuguese	Pronunciation	When to use it
Olá	oh-LAH	Hello, universal, both countries, anyone
Oi	OY	Hi, the Brazilian default, very common
Bom dia	bong DEE-a	Good morning, until midday
Boa tarde	BOH-a TAR-de	Good afternoon, from midday until dark
Boa noite	BOH-a NOY-te	Good evening AND good night, hello or goodbye
Tudo bem?	TOO-do BENG	"All good?", works as a hello on its own
Tudo bom?	TOO-do BONG	Same thing, Brazil
Como vai?	KOH-mo VAI	How's it going?
Como está?	KOH-mo esh-TAH	How are you? (polite, Portugal)
E aí?	ee ah-EE	"What's up?", Brazil, informal
Alô	ah-LOH	Hello on the phone, Brazil
Está?	shtah	Hello on the phone, Portugal
Muito prazer	MOO-ee-to pra-ZEHR	Nice to meet you

The one to internalise is Tudo bem?. Like the French ça va, it is a greeting, a question and an answer at once. Tudo bem? Tudo bem. is a complete exchange. In Brazil you will also hear tudo bom? answered with tudo bem, and nobody minds which order they come in.

Brazil vs Portugal: What Actually Changes

Same language, two very different everyday registers.

Oi is the Brazilian workhorse. In Portugal, olá does that job, and oi can read as blunt or as a request to repeat something ("huh?").
E aí? is pure Brazilian informality, roughly "yo" or "what's up". Common among friends, and often chained: E aí, tudo bem?
Phone: Brazil answers alô. Portugal answers está? or estou?, literally "are you there?" / "I'm here".
Boa noite behaves the same in both: it is a greeting when you arrive and a farewell when you leave, unlike the Greek or French equivalents.
Pronunciation is where the real gap sits, not vocabulary. European Portuguese swallows unstressed vowels, so bom dia can compress to something close to bong DEE-a said fast, while Brazilian keeps vowels open and musical.

If you have picked a country, pick its register too. Learning Brazilian oi, tudo bem and then using it in Lisbon is not wrong, it just marks you instantly.

Formal or Informal? Você, Tu and o Senhor

Portuguese formality is genuinely messier than Spanish, and honest guides admit it:

In Brazil, você is the default "you" for almost everyone, friends and strangers alike. It is not formal. For real deference, especially with elders or officials, use o senhor or a senhora: Como vai, senhor?
In Portugal, tu is the informal "you" among friends and family, and você is oddly ambiguous, polite in some contexts and borderline rude in others. Portuguese speakers often dodge it entirely by using the person's name or title: A Maria quer um café? to Maria's face.

The greetings themselves stay neutral. Olá and bom dia are safe with anyone in both countries. As everywhere, it is the follow-up question that carries the risk.

Pronunciation: What the Spelling Hides

Three details do most of the work.

Portuguese is a nasal language. The om in bom and the ão in não do not end in a consonant, they hum through the nose. Bom dia is closer to bõ DEE-a. This is the sound English speakers most consistently flatten.

Olá is stressed on the last syllable. The accent mark tells you: oh-LAH, not OH-la. Portuguese uses accents to mark stress, so the written word is telling you the rhythm if you know to look.

European and Brazilian vowels diverge sharply. Brazilian de sounds like "djee", European de is closer to "duh". Unstressed vowels in Portugal reduce so heavily that words can look nothing like they sound, which is exactly why so many learners understand Brazilian audio and freeze in Lisbon.

This is exactly where written guides run out of road. No respelling on a page contains a nasal vowel, because English does not have one, 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 oi in Portugal. Harmless, but it is Brazilian. In Lisbon, olá is the natural choice.
Treating boa noite as goodbye only. It is both. Walking into a restaurant at 9 pm, boa noite is exactly right.
Saying alô in person. Phone only, and Brazil only. In Portugal the phone hello is está?.
Assuming Spanish will carry you. Olá is not hola, and the nasal vowels have no Spanish equivalent. Portuguese speakers understand Spanish far better than the reverse.
Stressing OH-la. The accent is on the second syllable. It is a small thing that natives hear immediately.

Bonus: How to Say Goodbye in Portuguese

Tchau (CHOW), borrowed from the Italian ciao, the everyday goodbye in Brazil.
Adeus (a-DEUSH), goodbye, more final and more common in Portugal.
Até logo (a-TEH LOH-go), "see you later", and Até amanhã (a-TEH a-ma-NYANG), "see you tomorrow".
Até mais (a-TEH MAIS), casual "see you around", Brazil.
Boa noite, which closes the evening just as it opened it.

Learn olá, oi, bom dia, tudo bem and tchau with real audio, drill them until they are reflexes rather than translations, and you can open a conversation anywhere from Lisbon to São Paulo.

Keep Reading

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