If you wanted to greet someone in Korean with a polite ‘Good afternoon’, how would you do it? Well, the first thing you should know is that there is no direct translation of ‘Good afternoon’ in Korean. Some faulty translators may give a direct translation such as ‘좋은 오후’ but it’s awkward, and Koreans would never use this. Instead, some already common phrases are also used to imply ‘good afternoon’. Let’s teach them to you:
안녕하세요 (an-nyeong-ha-se-yo)
Back to the basics right!? If you’ve seen a past post of ours, you’ll know that this is probably the first phrase that anyone learns when learning Korean. At the very basic level, this simply means hello and it’s how Koreans greet everyone when they see each other. Korean doesn’t really have any greetings based around times of the day. However, it’s used at all times of the day and could translate to ‘good afternoon’.
If you’re talking with kids, you could use ‘안녕’ and for a more polite form, you could say ‘안녕하십니까’.
Again, you can use these at any time of the day when first greeting someone. Seriously. Now for good night, and good morning, there are some exceptions, so go check out our posts on those for some greetings you can use in those situations.
좋은 하루 보내세요 (jo-eun ha-ru bo-nae-se-yo)
This means ‘have a good day’ and is not a greeting, but something you would say as you are leaving. Although this is not a phrase for ‘good afternoon’ we thought it would also be a good phrase to know for this post.
And that’s it! Happy studying!