What about greetings in your country?

How are greetings in your country between men, women, with family, friends, with your boss and co-workers? Are they so different according to each culture?

I think we can learn more about it, sharing how is it in our countries.


I´m from Colombia, in south america. Here we are so friendly between us. When a woman greet to other woman or man, we give a kiss in cheek, it´s no matter if person is not a friend. When someone introduce to other, is common to greet in this way. But it not works for men. Men only greet with a kiss in cheek to women, no between men.

With friends and family, mainly between women or man – woman, is common greets with hugs. Between men is not frequently, but sometimes they do that.  

In work sometimes is more polite, but it depends from the people that works in each company. When people is very serious, they only give the right hand and that´s enough.

In most of the Islamic country we start our greeting by saying:
Assalam Alykoum Wa Rahmat Allah Wa Barakatuh

Men can't touch the women only if he know her. the greeting between the men are by handing and nose in my country. between women are the same too. Except the young lady is greet with a kiss in cheek and a hug from an old women we have to replay her in a kiss in her forehead.

What is the meaning of "Assalam Alykoum Wa Rahmat Allah Wa Barakatuh" in english?

 Could you traslate that for us?

It means peace be upon you and God's mercy and blessings.

It was very interesting to read about traditions of greetings in your countries. They differ with traditions in Ukraine. In my country we greet each other mostly with words, which differ very much between different people in different situations, and smiles. It depends upon age and gender too. Men often shake hands but not women. We kiss or hug each other only if we are relatives or very close friends. And even then it depends of characters of the persons and traditions of the family. For example in my family it is usual to kiss each others when we greet. But my elder daughter don’t like kisses from her childhood so she do it very seldom. She must be in an extremely good temper. But it’s not a problem for anybody. It’s usual for our people to feel and respect feelings of another person when we greet.

i live in germany. we don`t hug or kiss forgein people, buisness partner and so on. when we meet a person, we introduce us by shaking hands. meeting friends is something different: we hug each other or kiss in cheek. avowed people, but not really good friends we welcome by shaking hands/ or kiss the cheek, too. but most the time it`s just shaking hands. german people often attach importance to a certain kind of distance between not well -known-people. 

Perhaps… YEMEN

Hi Hakimi.Greetings Prevet , zdrastviti, Dobri Den are Russian. It's my native language, so I can say surely.

Hi everybody, thanks for your replies!

Hakimi, I believe "Comistas" isn´t a latin´s greeting. Maybe you confused it with  "¿Cómo estás?", this is a common greeting to people who talk spanish. Its meaning is "How are you?". 

Hi, I´m not sure what do you want to know about greeting in spanish. But if I undestood in the right way, I´m going to tell you some words and phrases that we use in spanish to greet others:

Hola: Hello

Cómo estás?: How are you?  

Qué tal, ¿cómo va todo?. : it´s like… What´s up. How is everuthing?

Buenos días: Good morning

Buenas tardes: Good afternoon

Buenas noches: Good night

Now… about how are our greetings, I did a short explication about it in the description of this forum. It´s from Colombia. I´m not sure how other countries who has spanish like native language does it.

about greeeting i start with hi in our language ( mrhaba or salam a'alaykom) and we shake hands that's how i greet people that they are not really my friends but when i greet my friends or a member from the family i say hi ( mrhaba or salam a'alaykom) and kissing on the cheek  !! that's what everybody do here ^^