When you’re learning a new language, it’s always nice to know the main ways of greeting someone, or wishing them well when you leave. Dutch, like most languages, has a lot of these. It’s impossible to touch upon all of them, but here’s a list of the most common Dutch greetings.
A bit of a disclaimer first: not only are there a lot of different greetings, there’s also a lot of regional variation. I’m mainly going to stick with the ones used in large parts of the country, but I’ll definitely swing by some common regional ones as well.
The H words
Just like English ones, and those in other Romance and Germanic languages, Dutch greetings tend to start with the letter H a lot. This makes sense given our common ancestry, and you’ll definitely recognize them.
Hoi
Easily the most common informal way to say hello, is hoi. It’s our version of hi, we just added an o for whichever reason. You’ll hear it being used among friends, family, and colleagues, you’ll see it written in text messages and emails, it’s basically everywhere. You can even double up on it: hoihoi isn’t as common, but it’s also used quite a lot.
While hoi is mainly used as a way to say hello, it’s also sometimes used the reverse way, as a means of saying bye. This is mostly the case for the northern provinces, especially Friesland, but it’s found all over the country.
Hallo
Hallo is, unsurprisingly, our version of hello. It’s slightly more formal than hoi, although it will also be used a lot in informal situations, but you’ll especially hear it before ordering food at a takeaway restaurant or in grocery stores, and on the phone. It’s basically your all-purpose greeting, more or less like it is in English, too.
We even use it the same way as the English do when they’re trying to sound surprised by something: Oh, hello!
Hey/hi
Over the years, more and more English has found its way into Dutch vocabulary, and that’s definitely the case for some of the greetings. Hey is the most widely used of these, although it’s sometimes written as heey or hee, all of which are pronounced like the English hey. Hi is also becoming increasingly popular, especially in office environments, where English is even more prevalent than it is in average daily life.
The G words
Many people will also recognize the G greetings, which are used in both formal and informal situations. There are five main ones:
goedemorgen (Eng: good morning)
goedemiddag (Eng: good afternoon)
goedenacht (Eng: good night)
goedenavond (Eng: good evening)
goedendag (Eng: good day)
Note how these last two have an extra n in there. This used to be true for all of them, due to ancient, out-of-use rules for grammatical cases, but it’s been dropped for the first three. The last two still use it, not just in written text, but also in speech (goedenacht also has an n, but it’s part of nacht / night).
Just like it is in English, goedenacht is mainly used as a way of saying bye, rather than saying hi, although all five of them can technically be used for both purposes. While the same is the case for good day in English, goedendag in Dutch is still more of a hello type of thing – although it’s not used a lot anyway.
In speech, the d in goede often gets swapped for an i, and it’s possible to write it down like that too: goeiemorgen, goeienavond. It’s perfectly accepted, it just has more of an informal feel to it.
One last interesting thing about goedemorgen is that it’s the only one where the goede part is often left out. It’s common in speech, but when it’s written down, it’s often done so as moggeh or moggûh, both of which are highly informal, especially in written text. You won’t find these in a dictionary, but you’ll definitely hear them around.
The D words
The Dutch use a lot of words starting with D when we leave a place. Few people from outside the Netherlands and Belgium will recognize these, so let’s go through them.
Dag
Dag literally means day, and it’s the short version of goedendag in the G list above. We don’t usually use the separate ones for when we leave, except for goedenacht, but the abbreviated form dag is most often used as a way of saying bye – although it can also mean hi. It can be used formally, but the informal way, often pronounced with a very stretched-out a sound, is also popular in highly informal situations.
Doei / doeg
Doei and doeg are both seen as even more informal versions of dag, although no one seems to be entirely sure whether they actually have the same origin. Still, they’re used exactly like that, as a way of saying bye to friends, family members, or others you know or meet in an informal situation. They’re both used interchangeably, and which one you prefer is entirely up to you.
Like hoihoi, doei and doeg are often doubled up, just like bye-bye. They both tend to lose their last letter in speech for the first part: doe-doei and doe-doeg. This pretty much happens only in speech.
One special version I’d like to mention, not in the last place because it touches upon two other DutchDabbles articles, is Nou doei hè. This version of doei has a special side meaning that’s something like Alright, really have to go now, bye – highly usable when you’ve been lingering around for far too long. Read more about nou and hè in these posts.
Tot ziens
Before we get to the somewhat dodgier ones, there’s one last one that deserves its own paragraph: tot ziens. It means something like until seeing, as in: until we see each other again. This one is slightly formal: it’s not used among friends or family members too often, but you’ll hear it a lot in restaurants, food stores, supermarkets, and other customer-employee environments.
Informal ways to say bye
While saying hi doesn’t provide you with a whole lot of options, saying bye is another story. There are a lot of informal things you can say when leaving a place, some of which are only used in some parts of the country, while others are common everywhere. Some of the most widely-used ones:
later / tot later / zie je later (Eng: later / until later / see you later)
de mazzel (derived from the Yiddisch mazel tov, meaning good luck. Most common around Amsterdam, historically the city with the largest Jewish community in the Netherlands)
de ballen (literally: the balls, probably first used by criminals in Amsterdam and other large cities – considered very, very informal)
groetjes (Eng: greetings, read all about those in this post)
houdoe (mainly used in the southern provinces, especially Noord-Brabant, and small parts of Belgium)
Lastly, the Dutch like using words from other languages. The German tschüss may be used a lot regionally, as well as the Italian ciao, or simply the English bye.
Long story short
Saying hi and bye in Dutch will take some getting used to, although many of these ways are directly linked to their English counterparts. Hoi is probably the most common informal way to say hi, while doei is its leaving equivalent. Like most Western languages around the world, we also use the good morning/afternoon/evening thing a lot.
It could be useful to get acquainted with these widely used ones, or even some of the regional ones if you live in a part of the country where they’re used, and to get a feel for which one to use in a given situation. For now, I’ll wish you a good day, tot ziens on DutchDabbles, and de mazzel!
