Greetings and Leave-Taking

Greetings are the first thing you will ever say in Afrikaans and the first thing anyone judges you on, so it is worth getting them exactly right. The good news is that the system is small and warm. The catch — and the place English speakers stumble — is that Afrikaans greets you differently depending on the time of day, and its farewells carry a friendliness that the flat English "goodbye" simply does not. This page covers how to open a conversation, the standard "how are you" exchange, and how to leave well.

Hallo and the time-of-day greetings

The all-purpose, time-neutral greeting is hallo (hello). You can use it at any hour, to anyone you are on informal terms with, and it never goes wrong. Slightly more casual still are haai (hi) and hi itself, both common in speech and texting.

But the greetings Afrikaners actually reach for first are the time-of-day ones, and this is where English has no equivalent system. English says "good morning" and then mostly gives up — almost nobody says "good afternoon" in casual speech, and "good evening" sounds like a hotel concierge. Afrikaans uses all of them, all the time, in ordinary conversation:

Note the critical split that trips up English speakers: goeienaand greets someone in the evening (you walk in, you say it), while goeienag is strictly a farewell — you say it as you leave or head to bed, never as you arrive. English "good night" does the same job, but English has no separate evening greeting, so learners reach for "good night" to greet and land it wrong.

Hoe gaan dit? — the standard exchange

Once you have greeted, the next move is to ask how someone is. The default question is Hoe gaan dit? — literally "How goes it?". Do not try to build it word-for-word from English "How are you", because the Afrikaans idiom uses gaan (to go) with the dummy subject dit (it), exactly like the old English "How goes it". There is no "are" and no "you" in the bare formula.

That second version adds met jou ("with you") and is just as common; you can also hear Hoe gaan dit met die werk? (How is work going?), slotting in any topic after met.

The expected reply is a tight, almost ritual formula:

Notice that Nie te sleg nie carries the classic Afrikaans double nie — the negation wraps the clause front and back. It is not "no, not bad"; the second nie is grammatically required. See the negation overview for why.

Aangename kennis — meeting someone new

When you are introduced to someone for the first time, the set phrase is Aangename kennis — literally "pleasant acquaintance", the equivalent of "pleased to meet you". A common slightly fuller version is Aangenaam om jou te ontmoet (nice to meet you), and in very casual contexts people simply say Aangenaam.

Leave-taking: where Afrikaans gets warm

This is the section English speakers most underestimate. English "goodbye" is functional and a little cold; "bye" is fine but empty. Afrikaans leave-takings are often genuine little well-wishes, and using them makes you sound markedly warmer and more native.

The neutral all-purpose farewell is totsiens (goodbye), often written tot siens — literally "until [we] see [each other]", the same idea as French au revoir or German auf Wiedersehen. For a soon-ish reunion, use tot later (see you later) or tot môre (see you tomorrow).

But the genuinely characteristic farewells are the wishing ones. Rather than just marking the parting, they hand the other person something:

The standout is sterkte — literally "strength". You say it to someone facing something hard: an exam, a job interview, an illness in the family, a difficult week. English has no single warm word for this; "good luck" is close but lighter, and "be strong" sounds stiff and stagey. Sterkte is everyday, sincere, and used constantly. Learning to drop it at the right moment is one of the fastest ways to sound genuinely Afrikaans-fluent rather than merely correct.

Common mistakes

Key takeaways

• Hallo works any time; the time-of-day greetings (goeiemôre / goeiemiddag / goeienaand) are what natives actually use — and goeienag is a farewell, not an evening greeting.
• The standard exchange is Hoe gaan dit (met jou)? → Goed dankie, en met jou? — built on gaan and dit, not a literal "how are you".
• Keep the double nie in replies like Nie te sleg nie.
• Afrikaans farewells wish something: lekker dag, mooi loop, and above all sterkte ("strength", for someone facing a hard time) — warmth English's flat "goodbye" lacks.
• For formal address, swap jy/jou for u in these formulas — see jy vs u.