HELLO. Welcome to the 'Meeting and Greeting' Tutorial. I am Chris, your tutor for this module. This tutorial will teach you the polite ways to greet English speaking people, and also warn you of the wrong (impolite) ways which you should avoid . Examples of both formal and informal greetings will be shown, and by clicking on the phrase or sentence you will be able to hear me speaking the greeting.

In the Thai language the word "SAWASDEE" is used as a polite greeting at any time of day. In the English language the part of day must be included.

An English person would say

"Good morning" before 12.00. "Good afternoon" after 12.00 and before 18.00. After 18.00 they would say "Good evening". "Good night" would be used only when leaving and is never used as a greeting even late at night.

A greeting could also begin with "Hello" or "Hi" but for an English person "Hey", as used by many on the Internet, would only be used by the most poorly educated, very low class persons. Please do not behave as the low-class do. Educated or high class English people would use "Hey!" only in an aggressive manner.

"HEY! Stop doing that!" "HEY! Come back here!"

In Thailand the word "Khun" is used as a very polite form of address, but when speaking English it should never be translated directly as "you". To an English person "You" is very impolite and can be taken to be an insult, instead you must use different words when addressing male and female persons.

A male would be called "sir" and a female "madam" or ("miss" for a younger single woman).

When speaking to those of a much higher status "madam" can be spoken differently "Ma'am" as if the word has no letter 'd'.

The English people are very lazy in the way that they use their language.

They would say "Morning. OK?" or even just "Morning" meaning "Good morning. How are you?"

Instead of saying "I am fine thank you, and how are you?" they would probably only say "OK? You?".

It would not be taken as an impolite reply but I recommend that always you use the full English greeting and reply.








Now it is time for us to look at some everyday English conversations.