How to Say Hello in Russian: Privet, Zdravstvuyte and When Each One Fits

Hello in Russian is здравствуйте (zdravstvuyte) when you are being polite, and привет (privet) with people you know well. Those two words cover almost every situation you will meet. Two warnings before anything else. Здравствуйте is famously the hardest word a Russian beginner runs into: seven consonants fighting over four syllables, and one of them is silent. And unlike English, where "hi" and "good morning" are more or less interchangeable, choosing the wrong one in Russian is a real social mistake. Say привет to a stranger twice your age and you have not been friendly, you have been rude. The rest of this guide covers every greeting Russians actually use, the formal rule that governs all of them, and the pronunciation that transliteration cannot show you.

The Essential Russian Greetings

Two things worth noticing straight away. Здравствуйте is never wrong. If you remember one word from this page, make it that one: overshooting into politeness costs you nothing in Russian, while undershooting costs you a lot. And добрый день is the quiet workhorse. It is polite without being as heavy as здравствуйте, it works with anyone, and it fills most of the waking day.

Вы and Ты: The Rule Behind Every Greeting

This is the part English speakers underestimate. Russian has two ways to say "you": вы (polite, or plural) and ты (familiar, singular). Every greeting sits on one side of that line, and здравствуйте versus привет is that same split in greeting form.

• Вы territory: anyone you have just met, anyone older, teachers, doctors, officials, shop staff, your boss, and any group of people even if you know each of them. Greeting: здравствуйте.
• Ты territory: friends, family, classmates, children, colleagues your own age once you have settled in. Greeting: привет.

This is not politeness theatre. Russian speakers track it constantly, and the wrong choice carries meaning. Привет to a stranger reads as presumptuous, as though you had decided you were already familiar. Здравствуйте to a close friend reads as cold or sarcastic, like you are creating distance on purpose.

When do you switch? You wait to be invited. The older person, the senior person, or the woman offers it, usually with давай на ты ("let's use ты"). Then you switch, and you switch completely: greeting, verb endings, everything. Do not switch unilaterally because the conversation felt friendly. Russians who are ready will tell you, and until they do, вы is not distant, it is simply correct.

One exception worth knowing: online and among young people, привет spreads fast. In a gaming chat or a student group, привет to a stranger is normal. The rule holds hardest in person, and hardest of all with anyone older than you.

Greeting by Time of Day

Russian time-of-day greetings are polite by default. They belong to the вы register, and none of them will get you in trouble.

• Доброе утро runs from waking up until roughly noon. It is warmer than здравствуйте and very common at work in the morning.
• Добрый день covers noon to evening. This is the one to lean on. It is the standard greeting on the phone with a business, in an email, and in any shop after lunch.
• Добрый вечер starts around 6 pm and lasts until people go home.

Now the trap. Доброй ночи is not a greeting. It means "good night" in the sense of "sleep well", and you say it when leaving, never when arriving. The grammar gives it away: утро, день and вечер are nominative (добрый день, a statement), while ночи is genitive (доброй ночи), a leftover of "I wish you a good night". Same split as English "good evening" versus "good night", except Russian marks it in the ending.

Pronunciation: What the Transliteration Hides

Three things do most of the damage.

Здравствуйте drops a letter. Written out, it is з-д-р-а-в-с-т-в-у-й-т-е. Spoken at normal speed, the first в is silent: zdrast-vooy-tye. Russians compress it further in casual speech, down to something like zdrast-tye or a mumbled drast-ye. You do not need the mumble, but you do need to drop that в, because sounding out every letter is an instant giveaway.

Stress decides the vowels. Russian has one stressed syllable per word and it is not decorative. Здра́вствуйте stresses the дра. Приве́т stresses the вет, so it is pri-VYET, never PRI-vyet. Споко́йной, до́брое, пока́: get the stress wrong and native listeners genuinely struggle, because the unstressed vowels around it change too.

Unstressed о sounds like "a". This is called akanye and it is the single most useful pronunciation fact in Russian. Пока́ is pa-KA, not po-KA. Спокойной ночи is spa-KOY-nay NO-chee. Доброе утро has its stressed о in до, so that one stays an "o", while the trailing ое softens to something closer to a mumbled "uh". The transliterations on this page write o because the letter is о. Your mouth should not.

This is exactly where a written guide runs out of road. No spelling of здравствуйте will teach your mouth a cluster like здр, and reading transliterations out loud quietly trains the wrong habits into place. The only fix is to hear a native say the whole word, then say it back out loud, several times, until your tongue stops fighting it. 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 without stalling. It is how the Hyperpolyglot app handles every phrase across its 55 languages: real sentences, native audio, looped until they come out automatically. Available on iOS, Android, and Web.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

1. Using привет with a stranger or an elder. The most common beginner error, and the one Russians actually notice. Default to здравствуйте and let the other person downgrade you.
2. Pronouncing every letter of здравствуйте. The first в is silent. Zdrast-vooy-tye. Sounding out zdrav-stvooy-tye marks you as a learner in one word.
3. Using доброй ночи to say hello. It is a farewell. Walking in at 10 pm, you want добрый вечер.
4. Saying алло in person. Алло is phone-only. In a doorway it sounds absurd, like answering a handset that is not there.
5. Treating как дела? as a greeting on its own. It comes after привет or здравствуйте, and unlike English, it invites a real (short) answer: нормально or хорошо and move on.

Bonus: How to Say Goodbye in Russian

• До свидания▶ (da svi-DA-niya), the polite standard, literally "until we meet again". Pairs with здравствуйте.
• Пока▶ (pa-KA), "bye", casual, pairs with привет. Often doubled: пока-пока.
• Увидимся▶ (oo-VEE-dim-sya), "see you", friendly and relaxed.
• Спокойной ночи▶ (spa-KOY-nay NO-chee), "good night", said to someone going to bed.
• Всего доброго▶ (fsyi-VO DO-bra-va), "all the best", warm and slightly formal, common when leaving a shop.

Learn здравствуйте, привет, добрый день and пока with real audio, drill them until they arrive as reflexes rather than translations, and you can open and close a conversation anywhere from Moscow to Almaty without thinking about it.

Keep Reading

• Language Islands -- the real-sentence method that turns greetings into actual conversations
• The Shadowing Technique -- how to drill pronunciation until it becomes automatic
• How to Learn Multiple Languages at the Same Time