Greetings and Politeness

In English, "hi" and "hello" are almost interchangeable, and you can greet your boss and your best friend with the same word. Czech does not work like that. Every greeting carries a register, and choosing one commits you to a relationship: greet someone with ahoj and you have just declared that you are on familiar ty-terms. This page lays out the everyday greetings and leave-takings, the two politeness words that hold all of it together (prosím and děkuji), and the social logic that decides which to use.

The central split: formal vs. informal

Czech greetings sort cleanly into two columns. The dividing line is whether you address the person as vy (polite, "vykání") or ty (familiar, "tykání"). The greeting you pick has to match.

The formal greetings: Dobrý den and its relatives

Dobrý den — literally "good day" — is the all-purpose formal greeting, usable from late morning to early evening with anyone you don't know or address as vy: shop assistants, officials, doctors, colleagues, strangers on the street. When in doubt, this is the safe default.

The time-of-day variants are real and worth using:

• Dobré ráno — "good morning," used in the early morning. (Note: neuter ráno takes the neuter adjective dobré.)
• Dobrý den — "good day," the daytime default.
• Dobrý večer — "good evening," from dusk on.
• Dobrou noc — "good night," but only as a leave-taking before sleep, never as a greeting on arrival.

Note the agreement quirk: all four greetings are frozen accusatives (from přeji vám…, "I wish you…"). You only see the accusative on noc, which is feminine: dobr*ou noc (accusative), not the dictionary *dobrá noc. With ráno (neuter) and den / večer (masculine inanimate) the accusative looks identical to the dictionary form — dobré ráno, dobrý den, dobrý večer — so nothing seems to change. Just learn each as a set unit.

The informal greetings: ahoj, čau, nazdar

Among friends, family, classmates, and anyone you're on ty-terms with, the formal greetings would sound stiff. Instead:

• Ahoj — the standard friendly "hi" and "bye." (Yes, the same word does both — like Italian ciao.)
• Čau — even more casual, borrowed from Italian ciao; also "hi" and "bye."
• Nazdar — friendly, a touch old-school or matey, more common among men and in some regions. (informal)
• Čus — very casual, youthful "hi/bye." (informal)

Leave-takings

Saying goodbye splits along the same line:

• Na shledanou — "goodbye" (literally "until we see each other again"), the formal leave-taking, the mirror image of Dobrý den. (formal)
• Ahoj / Čau — informal "bye." (informal)
• Měj se / Mějte se — "take care" (literally "have yourself"), warm and friendly; měj se to one ty-person, mějte se to several or to a vy-person. (informal–neutral)
• Dobrou noc — "good night," when parting before bed. (neutral)
• Tak zatím — "see you / so long for now," casual. (informal)

The backbone of politeness: prosím and děkuji

Two words carry most of the politeness load in Czech, and you will use them constantly.

Děkuji ("thank you," colloquially děkuju) — the all-purpose thanks. Díky is the casual "thanks." You can intensify it: moc děkuji / děkuji moc "thank you very much," or mockrát děkuji "thanks a lot."

Prosím is the more remarkable of the two, because one word handles several jobs that English splits across different phrases:

To these add a couple of essentials: promiňte "excuse me / sorry" (formal, also to get someone's attention) and its informal twin promiň; s dovolením "excuse me" (squeezing past someone); and není zač "don't mention it" (literally "there's nothing to thank for"), an alternative to prosím as "you're welcome."

A formal exchange vs. an informal one

Put it together and the same conversation comes in two flavours. Formal, with a stranger:

Informal, with a friend:

The grammar is parallel — máte vs. máš, vy vs. ty — but the social worlds are different. The close reading of the formal version lives on the greetings dialogue page; the full pragmatics of ty vs. vy are on the tykání vs. vykání page.

Usage note

The biggest English-speaker pitfall is treating greetings as register-neutral, the way "hi" and "hello" are. In Czech they are not. Opening with ahoj to a shopkeeper or an older stranger reads as overfamiliar, even cheeky; opening with Dobrý den to a close friend sounds oddly cold and distancing, as if you were holding them at arm's length. When unsure, default to the formal — Dobrý den, na shledanou, the vy-forms — and let the other person invite you onto ty-terms. Czechs are often direct about this: someone may literally say Můžeme si tykat? ("Can we use ty?"), and once that's agreed, the greetings switch to ahoj on the spot. Greetings in letters and emails also lean on the vocative for names and titles (Vážený pane Nováku); see the vocative in greetings and letters.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Greetings carry register: Dobrý den / na shledanou (formal, vy) vs. ahoj / čau / nazdar (informal, ty).
• Match the time of day in the formal set: Dobré ráno, Dobrý den, Dobrý večer, and Dobrou noc (leave-taking only).
• Prosím = please / here you are / you're welcome / go ahead / pardon?; děkuji (děkuju, díky) = thank you.
• When unsure, default to formal and let the other person offer ty.
• The right greeting signals warmth or respect; the wrong one signals overfamiliarity or coldness — there is no neutral "hi/hello" in Czech.