Greetings and goodbyes in Polish
9 words in Polish on the topic “greetings and goodbyes”: Cześć — hi, dzień dobry — good day, dzień dobry — good morning, dobry wieczór — good evening.
9 words on the topic
- Cześćhisoft ch at the front: "chessht"
- dzień dobrygood dayThe neutral, polite greeting. With a stranger start here, not with cześć. It works for most of the day — Polish greeting hours have soft edges.
- dzień dobrygood morningPolish has no separate morning greeting: until noon it is the same dzień dobry. A trap for habit, not for the ear — hunting for a special "good morning" is pointless.
- dobry wieczórgood eveningó sounds like oo: "DOH-brih VEH-choor"
- do widzeniagoodbyeLiterally "until seeing" — the same root as English "vision". The neutral farewell for every occasion.
- pabyeThe simplest "bye" there is, often doubled: pa, pa. For your own circle only — you do not say this to a stranger.
- jak się masz?how are you?Literally "how do you have yourself". Się is an echo particle that turns the action back on its doer — and a Pole never drops it.
- jak się macie?how are you all?Addressed to a whole group. The polite singular is built differently: Jak się Pan miewa? — the verb slips into the third person, because you are asking "the Mister", not "you".
- dobranocgood nightLiterally "good night" — a wish before sleep, not a greeting. Meeting in the evening, people say dobry wieczór.
How it sounds in a sentence
A word list is a blank. Conversation is made of sentences, and these are the ones the words fit into most often.
What is worth knowing about these words
Cześć — hi. Between friends, at any time of day — and the same word says goodbye, one word covering the entrance and the exit of a conversation.
dzień dobry — good day. The neutral, polite greeting. With a stranger start here, not with cześć. It works for most of the day — Polish greeting hours have soft edges.
dzień dobry — good morning. Polish has no separate morning greeting: until noon it is the same dzień dobry. A trap for habit, not for the ear — hunting for a special "good morning" is pointless.
dobry wieczór — good evening. From about six in the evening. Wieczór is "evening", and it keeps working as a greeting right up until night.
Test yourself
Recalling a spelling from meaning is harder than recognizing a familiar word — and therefore more useful.
- How do you say “hi” in Polish?
Between friends, at any time of day — and the same word says goodbye, one word covering the entrance and the exit of a conversation.
- How do you say “how are you all?” in Polish?
Addressed to a whole group. The polite singular is built differently: Jak się Pan miewa? — the verb slips into the third person, because you are asking "the Mister", not "you".
- How do you say “bye” in Polish?
The simplest "bye" there is, often doubled: pa, pa. For your own circle only — you do not say this to a stranger.
- How do you say “good evening” in Polish?
From about six in the evening. Wieczór is "evening", and it keeps working as a greeting right up until night.
- How do you say “good day” in Polish?
The neutral, polite greeting. With a stranger start here, not with cześć. It works for most of the day — Polish greeting hours have soft edges.
How to learn the set instead of just reading it
Every conversation starts here, and so does every first impression: say hello in the local language and you stop being a stranger in about a second.
A list is read in a minute and forgotten in a day. What works: hide the translation, try to recall, get it wrong — and come back to the same words tomorrow.
- Recalling beats re-reading. Covering the translation and trying to remember it does more than reading it ten more times.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · 188 experiments, 272 comparisons. g = 0.61; against plain re-reading 0.51, against passive review 0.93.
- Study spread over days wins not only in experiments but in ordinary classrooms, with real students.checked many timesMawson & Kang, 2025, Behavioral Sciences 15(6):771 · 22 studies, d = 0.54 (confidence interval 0.31–0.77). The authors warn that individual studies disagree widely.
Frequently asked
How do you say “hi” in Polish?
«Cześć». Soft ch at the front: "chessht". It is one of 9 words in the set “greetings and goodbyes” — the rest are in the table above.
How many greetings do you need to start?
The whole set on this page is 9 words, but there is no need to start with all of it: the words you will need in the next few days are enough. Take them a few at a time — five to seven new ones per session.