Hola, buenos días.

A natural Latin American pronunciation is:

• Hola → OH-lah
• buenos días → roughly BWEH-nohs DEE-ahs

A few key points:

• The h in hola is silent.
• buenos starts with a bw sound: bwe-.
• días has the stress on dí- because of the accent mark.

A simple full pronunciation guide is:

OH-lah, BWEH-nohs DEE-ahs.

Yes, either one can work by itself.

• Hola = a general hello
• Buenos días = good morning

Using both together is very common and natural. It sounds a bit warmer or more complete, like:

• Hello, good morning.

You can say:

• Hola.
• Buenos días.
• Hola, buenos días.

All three are normal.

It works in both formal and informal situations.

You can say it to:

• friends
• neighbors
• coworkers
• store clerks
• teachers
• people you do not know

Hola by itself is friendly and neutral.
Buenos días is polite and appropriate in almost any setting.
Together, they sound friendly and polite.

Because días is a masculine plural noun, so the adjective must match it:

• buenos = masculine plural
• días = masculine plural

So:

• buenos días ✔
• buenas días ✘

One detail that surprises learners: día ends in -a, but it is still masculine: el día.

Buenos días is a fixed greeting in Spanish, just like buenas tardes and buenas noches.

Even though English says good morning in the singular, Spanish traditionally uses the plural form here:

• buenos días

For a learner, the easiest approach is to memorize it as one expression.

Also, in some regions of Latin America, especially parts of the Southern Cone, you may hear buen día, but buenos días is the safest and most widely understood option everywhere.

Use it in the morning.

The exact cutoff can vary by country or person, but a common pattern is:

• buenos días → morning
• buenas tardes → afternoon / early evening
• buenas noches → night

In many places, people stop using buenos días around noon or a little after.

Yes. The correct spelling is días with an accent on í.

• días ✔
• dias ✘

The accent mark shows the correct stress: DEE-ahs, not dee-AHS or something flatter.

In casual texting, some native speakers may leave accents out, but in correct writing you should include it.

The comma is natural because the speaker is combining two greeting expressions:

• Hola
• buenos días

So the comma helps separate them, like in English:

• Hello, good morning.

You may also see it written without the comma in informal contexts, but Hola, buenos días. is a clean, standard way to write it.

You can absolutely say Hola, buenos días to one person.

The plural in buenos días does not mean you are greeting multiple people. It is just the standard form of the expression.

So you can say it to:

• one person
• a group
• a room full of people

It works in all those cases.

Yes, definitely.

In fact, Buenos días alone is extremely common, especially when:

• entering a store
• greeting a receptionist
• speaking politely to someone you do not know well
• starting a conversation in the morning

Adding Hola simply makes it sound a little more conversational or friendly.

Only if it begins the sentence.

So:

• Hola, buenos días. ✔
• Le dije: hola, buenos días. ✔

Like in English, capitalization depends on position in the sentence, not on the word itself being a greeting.

Yes: Hola, buenos días is widely understood and completely natural across Latin America.

A few regional notes:

• Buenos días is universal and safe everywhere.
• Some countries or regions may prefer slightly different levels of warmth or formality.
• In some areas, especially Argentina and nearby regions, buen día is also common.

But if you are learning general Latin American Spanish, Hola, buenos días is an excellent choice.