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Transcript
Hello and welcome to Britcast. I’m Katie and I’m from the UK. In this series of podcasts I’m going to introduce you to all things British. British accent, British words and phrases and British culture. This is the advanced podcast – this means that I’ll be speaking at a fairly normal pace and using words and phrases that I actually use in my everyday English. If you find this a little bit tricky, you can always go and download the transcript and read as you listen. 

As today is the first in the series we’re going to talk about greetings. In the UK we can say hello in lots of ways. Most of the time we say “hi” or “hey” when we are talking to our friends and family. We can also say “good morning,” “good afternoon” and “good evening.” We can’t say “good night” because this actually means “goodbye” – and we can only use it at the end of the conversation.

When we say “good morning” “good afternoon” or “good evening” sometimes we miss out the word “good” (especially when we say “good morning”). So most of the time when I see people in the morning I just say “morning.” Try it with me. “Morning.” I can also say “afternoon” or “evening” but this is less common. When I say it like this it’s informal or friendly. If I want to talk in a more formal way, for example if I am talking to my manager or somebody I don’t know I will say the word “good”– “good morning, good afternoon, good evening.”

In very informal English we sometimes say “what’s up” or “alright” – this is like saying ”hello” and “how are you” at the same time. When someone says this to you, you normally just say the same thing to them. Or you can say “hey” or “hi” or “how are you.” Personally I find it difficult to answer “what’s up” – some people like me say “nothing much” because I feel like it’s a question – if you want to be funny you can also say “the sky” but it’s an old joke so don’t use it too often…

After saying “hi” we nearly always say “how are you.” Now there are several ways of doing this. “How are you?” is the neutral or formal way of asking, but when I see my friends I normally say “how’s it going?” “howsit goin” (notice I joined the “how’s” and “it” into one word – “howsit”) I can also say “how are you doing?” but I say it like this “howya doin.” Did you notice I dropped the “are?” Listen again “how are you doing” becomes “howya doin.” The answer to all of these questions is normally “fine thanks” or “good thanks” – we can then say “and you?“ or just “you?” So next time you greet someone in English, try to use some of these phrases to instantly sound a little bit more fluent.

If you liked this podcast please share it with your friends and if you want to know more about how to practice your English check out English Café Alex on Facebook.
www.facebook.com/englishcafealex

BritCast Ep1: Greetings (Advanced)

MiXCast is an online based English podcast, comes to you every Friday night.
We have 3 main programs: BritCast, EgyCast and MiXCast Idioms.

BritCast Ep1: Greetings (Advanced)

MixCast (English Podcast)