Someone just said привет to you and you froze. Or you're about to meet a Russian speaker, open a language exchange, or land in Moscow, and the very first word out of your mouth is going to be a greeting. Get it right and the conversation opens. Get it wrong — say the casual one to your new boss — and you've made a small, memorable mistake.
Russian greetings are not hard. There are about ten you actually need, they split cleanly into formal and informal, and one of them (здравствуйте) is famous for being a mouthful. This guide gives you all ten with audio you can play, the formality rule that decides which one to use, and the two mistakes almost every beginner makes.
Play each one. Say it out loud. That's the whole trick.
👋 The 10 Russian Greetings You Actually Need
Each one has audio — tap and repeat.
1. Здравствуйте — the safe formal hello
— ZDRAST-vooy-tye
The default polite greeting. Use it with strangers, shopkeepers, colleagues, anyone older than you, and any group of people. If you learn exactly one greeting, learn this one — it is never wrong.
2. Привет — hi
— pree-VYET
The everyday informal hello. Friends, classmates, family, people your own age you already know. Warm and completely normal — just not for your landlord.
3. Здравствуй — the singular formal-ish hello
— ZDRAST-vooy
The singular form of #1, used with one person you're on familiar-but-respectful terms with. Less common in daily speech than the other two, but you will hear it.
4. Доброе утро — good morning
— DOB-ro-ye OO-tro
Until roughly noon. Works in both formal and informal settings, which makes it a very useful escape hatch when you're unsure how formal to be.
5. Добрый день — good afternoon
— DOB-riy DYEN
Noon until evening. This is the greeting you'll hear most in shops, offices and on the phone. Neutral, polite, always safe.
6. Добрый вечер — good evening
— DOB-riy VYE-cher
From about 6pm. Same register as #5.
7. Здорово — hey there
— zdah-RO-vah
Slangy, casual, and slightly masculine in flavour. Common between friends. Notice it looks like здо́рово meaning "great" — same letters, different stress, different word. Context does the work.
8. Приветик — hiya
— pree-VYE-tik
A cutesy diminutive of привет. Texts, close friends, kids. Charming from the right person in the right moment.
9. Алло — hello, on the phone
— ah-LYO
Phone only. Russians do not answer the phone with здравствуйте — they answer with this.
10. Как дела — how are you
— kak dye-LA
Not technically a greeting, but it follows one so reliably that it counts. Attach it to привет and you have a complete opening:
🎩 Formal or Informal? The One Rule That Decides
Russian splits the world in two, and the split is baked into the grammar itself: вы (formal/plural "you") versus ты (informal singular "you"). Your greeting has to match.
Important
When in doubt, be formal. Russians will often invite you to switch to ты themselves — "давай на ты" — and that invitation is a small social gift. Taking it before it's offered is the mistake.
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🗣️ How to Actually Pronounce Здравствуйте
It looks like eleven consonants stacked in a trenchcoat. It isn't — Russians themselves drop letters when they say it fast.
The secret: the first в is silent. Nobody pronounces zdraVstvuytye. What actually comes out is closer to ZDRAST-vooy-tye — three beats, stress on the first.
Build it up:
- ZDRAST — say it like the English word "drast" with a z glued to the front
- ZDRAST-vooy — add a quick "vooy", like the end of "buoy"
- ZDRAST-vooy-tye — finish with a soft "tye"
Example
In very fast speech you'll even hear it collapse to a mumbled "zdrast" or "drast" between people who know each other. Don't aim for that yet — but it's why the word sounds nothing like it looks.
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⚠️ The Two Mistakes Beginners Always Make
Mistake 1: Using привет with someone you just met. English has one "hello" and it stretches to cover everything. Russian doesn't. Saying привет to a stranger, a receptionist, or someone twenty years your senior reads as over-familiar — not offensive, but noticeably off, the way calling a new colleague "buddy" would be. Default to здравствуйте until told otherwise.
Mistake 2: Answering "как дела?" with a real answer. In many contexts it's a formality, exactly like the English "how are you?" — but Russians are also famous for answering it honestly when they mean it. The safe reply is short: (ha-ra-SHO, spa-SEE-ba — "good, thanks") or (nar-MAL-na — "fine"). Read the room; if they slow down and look at you, they want the real version.
📝 A Quick Reference You Can Screenshot
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🎯 Reading It Is Not Saying It
Here's the honest part: you can memorise this whole table in ten minutes and still freeze when a real Russian speaker says здравствуйте to you. Greetings live in your mouth, not on a page. The gap between knowing привет and saying привет without hesitating is the entire difficulty of learning a language — and it closes exactly one way, by speaking.
That's what Umi, Univext's AI tutor, is for. You talk, Umi listens and answers in Russian, corrects your pronunciation in the moment, and never gets impatient with the twelfth attempt at здравствуйте. It's the practice partner you'd need a tutor for, available at 2am when the urge strikes.
Important
Say your first Russian hello out loud today. Start a free lesson with Umi — no schedule, no pressure, just you speaking Russian in the next five minutes. Try a free lesson →
📚 Keep Going
Greetings are step one. Step two is being able to read what you're saying — the Cyrillic alphabet takes a weekend and unlocks every sign, menu and message in Russian: Russian Alphabet: The Complete Cyrillic Guide (2026).
And if you're still deciding which tool to learn with, we tested them: Best Apps to Learn Russian in 2026 (Tested & Ranked).
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✅ The Short Version
- Здравствуйте for everyone you don't know. It is never wrong.
- Привет for friends only.
- Добрый день when you can't decide.
- The first в in здравствуйте is silent — ZDRAST-vooy-tye.
- Reading these is not the same as saying them. Go say one.
