Bαρ βαρ βαρ–βαρ βαρ – βαρ, βαρ, βαρ (βαρ).
(blathers in barbarian)
6 Likes
That’s what I said… (earlier) 
1 Like
It just seems like that article was mostly written by a single person with a niche knowledge so it’s not very comprehensive. I would be stunned if there was ever a language that didn’t have an equivalent of “hello”.
Saying gg at the start is rather strange to me. I assume the people who do it aren’t native English speakers. It would be like saying “Good morning” at the end of the conversation. But aloha in Hawaiian is used for hello and goodbye and that would feel weird to me as well, maybe in some language/culture saying “good game” at the beginning feels more natural.
3 Likes
No – it just means that people with other native languages have not cared enough about that Wikipedia article to add something about their language.
Don’t make the mistake to think that all Wikipedia articles are completely objective and neutral. 
1 Like
I’ve been told unanimously by Chinese people that there is no culture of greeting expressions in modern Chinese society.
The presumption that every culture has greeting expressions does not seem valid to me.
It seems that I’m quite old-fashioned about the ‘gg’ matter.
I greet my opponents in full sentences, and I don’t even use macros, but type everything by hand. I just think it’s polite to spend a few seconds to greet each of my opponents individually, and also to say “Thanks for the game!” afterwards (or even more than that).
It might be important to add that I almost only play correspondence games and I can type rather fast.
However, I don’t get angry if some of my opponents just answer with “gg” or don’t write anything at all. It’s a bit of bad manners in my opinion, but it’s just playing online after all.
3 Likes
I just say gg because its easy. I don’t actually think it has anything to do with lazy or not lazy. But, its the internet and people on the internet are use to using shortened phrases. Also “Does it mean we are getting lazier” How far back exactly? because even as early as I started people used “gg”. I have almost never seen anyone say anything other then gl or gg.
Sometimes I don’t even say anything also not because I am lazy and not because I am trying to be rude. But, sometimes I just don’t feel like typing. If my opponent takes offence to it then oh well :-).
3 Likes
My typical chat aganst a stranger is
heyo~
have a nice game c:
[game is played]
gg
thanks for the game (especially if the opponent has been “polite” or “considerate”)
interesting one / well-played (if the game has actually been good)
Then I often start discussing some variations, again if the game has been good.
3 Likes
They don’t say anything when they meet each other/ leave each other/ enter a room etc? This sounds weird, I would like some native speaker to weigh in.
Note: I’m wondering if the question was “do you have a word for hello”, which is different from “do you have a word/ phrase that is used as a greeting”.
2 Likes
This is my information from native–speaking Chinese people I’ve asked about this:
-
There is no common modern greeting culture of any kind.
-
The closest thing is a phrase translatable to “have you eaten yet?” but this is an archaism, perhaps something your grandparents might say to you.
-
There is a certain term (I forget) used as the Chinese translation of “hello” in foreign films imported into China, but this is not actually used in Chinese conversation.
2 Likes
Ni Hao?
1 Like
I had a detailed conversation about this last year on the OSR discord, as did several native speakers.
I remember because I said I cared to learn some Chinese pleasantries and they educated me that these don’t really exist.
To paraphrase from memory:
“In conversation, Westerners hate silence but the Chinese loathe small talk.”
3 Likes
A common problem when encountering new things is mixing “find something relatable so I can comprehend this foreign thing” and “it needs to be 1:1, or I can’t comprehend it”.
(Especially with languages, although I’m eternally fascinated by them, I try to keep in mind that they don’t exist in a vacuum for me to study, but they are someone’s language, independent of me and my fascination. That’s a sidenote)
In many languages people don’t use “Health!” (roughly translated, the original word that now we use for “hello” in Greek), however I can understand that “Are you at peace?” performs the same function. I won’t say “oh, other people don’t have a word for “hello”, because I can’t translate it to anything resembling “health””.
Whatever I have found on current Chinese culture, greetings are important. But I’m not a native, so anyone who can enlighten us, please do.
I consider bowing/ handshakes (RIP, post-Corona) etc part of a greeting culture, albeit non-verbal.
PS. If you mean “ni hao” (?) I think I remember reading that, while it’s not the “natural” greeting, it became so often used by foreigners that it is now actually used in cdramas, in a way it was willed into existence.
2 Likes
Small talk and greetings are not the same thing.
And I’d say that thing about small talk and Westerners is a generalization, but it serves us right, in a way, doesn’t it? 
I consider bowing/ handshakes (RIP, post-Corona) etc part of a greeting culture, albeit non-verbal.
My oversight. I only meant to discuss verbal culture.
I’ll ping @Groin, since he is the only Chinese native I’m aware of here.
Hopefully he’ll offer his knowledge.
Also, this discussion should perhaps be spun off into a separate thread later. It’s a little off-topic.
I may be wrong about this, but I always thought that @Groin was a French expat living and travelling around in China. I believe he’s posted pictures of himself and also remarked about facing some forms of discrimination/exclusion for being white. However, I assume that he does speak Chinese quite well.
@RubyMineshaft also speaks Chinese well.
As far as I know, I’m the only native Chinese person regularly active here on these forums, if we draw the distinction of @claire_yang as being from Taiwan (and I’m not mistaken about her being in Taiwan).
“Ni hao” is a natural and widely used greeting in China (and among Chinese expats that I’ve observed here in the USA), at least for where I’m from. However, China is vast and diverse, so there are different trends and customs across the country.
“Have you eaten yet” is also a very widely used greeting or just an actual question, especially among family and friends. Among colleagues, it might be a sort of leading to question to suggest getting lunch together.
Also, when answering the phone, we say “wei”.
6 Likes
Now I need to know what “wei” means?
And googling this OT rabbit hole has blown my mind:
“If you think that early telephone users simply decided to answer the phone the same way they greeted each other in person, you’ve actually got it backwards. That’s right, “hello” was a phone greeting before it was commonly used in person.”
6 Likes
Ah! I thought you Chinese–American since your English is so famously sharp!
2 Likes
Also probably not representative of Gen Z. Where is Vagabond when you need him.
2 Likes