How to Say Hello in Swiss German: Grüezi, Hoi and Sali

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The first Swiss German most people hear is a single word at a shop counter or on a mountain path: Grüezi! It is the polite hello of German-speaking Switzerland, and you can get a long way with it. But it is not the word you use with friends, it changes when you greet a group, and in Bern or Basel it sounds different again.

This post covers the greetings you need for daily life: the polite hello and the friendly one, how to greet several people at once, the main regional forms, how to say goodbye, and what Grüezi actually means. If you want to know first why Swiss German is not the German you learned in class, start with The Swiss German People Actually Speak.

Grüezi: the polite hello

Grüezi is for one person you would call Sie: the shop assistant, the doctor, the conductor, your child’s teacher, a stranger you ask for directions. It works at any time of day. A bakery greets you with Grüezi! Was dörfs si? (“Hello! What can I get you?”), and a dental practice answers the phone with Zahnarztpraxis Müller, Grüezi.

You can say Hallo and be understood, but it sounds like Standard German. When a learner tries it in the bakery scene of our app, the assistant answers, kindly: Und ‘Grüezi’ wär netter als ‘Hallo’. (“And Grüezi would be nicer than Hallo.”)

Hoi and Sali: hello among friends

With people you call du — friends, family, neighbours, colleagues your own age — Grüezi sounds stiff. Here you say Hoi or Sali. A new neighbour might introduce himself with Hoi! Bisch du de Nöi? Ich bi de Thomas, din Nachbar. (“Hi! Are you the new one? I’m Thomas, your neighbour.”) The safe rule is to answer in the register you were greeted in: Hoi back to Hoi, Grüezi back to Grüezi.

Greeting a group

Two small words turn a greeting into one for several people. Mitenand and zäme both mean roughly “together”, so Grüezi mitenand and Grüezi zäme are “hello, everyone”. The same trick works with the friendly greetings: Hoi zäme, and even Tschau zäme when you leave.

You will hear it from the train conductor (Grüezi mitenand, d’Billett bitte. — “Hello everyone, tickets please.”) and, above all, on hiking trails. In a city you do not greet strangers in the street. In a village, and above all on a marked trail, it is the other way round: every hiker you pass gets a Grüezi, and a whole family gets a Grüezi mitenand. Walking past in silence is what marks you as a visitor.

Grüezi, region by region

Swiss German has no standard form, and the greeting is one of the first places you notice it. These are the hellos our app gives for a few of its regions:

Bern has the biggest difference. Grüessech is Bern’s own form of the polite hello, and the University of Bern’s dialect survey found it as firmly in place among young speakers as among older ones. The polite “you” is different there too: instead of Sie, Bernese use Dihr, much as French uses vous. In Basel, Grüezi arrives with a Basel accent as Griezi, though between friends it is Sali. And everybody understands Grüezi everywhere, so a visitor using it in Bern or the Wallis is never wrong, only recognisable.

What Grüezi actually means

Grüezi is a blessing worn down to two syllables. According to the editors of the Schweizerisches Idiotikon, the national dictionary of Swiss German, it comes from Gott grüez-i, “may God greet you”. The -i at the end is an unstressed euch, the plural “you”. In the original formula it is God who does the greeting.

The same blessing explains Bern. East of the river Reuss, the verb “to greet” was grüeze; west of it, grüesse. So the east originally got Grüezi and the west Gott grüess ech, today’s Grüessech; since then Grüezi has spread west, to Luzern and Basel. The verb is still in use: a teacher saying goodbye at a parents’ evening adds Und grüezed Sie mir de Luca — “and say hello to Luca for me”. Nobody hears anything religious in the greeting today.

Saying goodbye

Uf Widerluege is the polite one, literally “on looking again”, the Swiss auf Wiedersehen. Use it with the teacher, the doctor, the landlord: Merci vilmal für s’Gspröch. Uf Widerluege! (“Thank you very much for the talk. Goodbye!”). Ade, and in Bern and Basel Adie, are shorter and still fine with strangers: a quick Merci vilmal, ade! at the pharmacy counter is perfectly polite. An older couple you pass on a trail says goodbye with Adie mitenand!

Tschau comes from the Italian ciao and is the warm, informal goodbye: Tschau Tante Vreni, bis am Samschtig! (“Bye, Aunt Vreni, see you on Saturday!”). To a teacher it would sound too casual. As for Tschüss: many Swiss, younger ones especially, say it to friends, but to a stranger it can sound like German from Germany. When a learner says it in our app’s second-hand shop, the saleswoman replies that Tschüss is what the Germans say, and here it is Uf Widerluege or Adie.

Handshake or three kisses?

The words come with a gesture. At work, a handshake is the norm. Among friends and family, many Swiss greet each other with three kisses on alternating cheeks. Which cheek comes first is not settled, and accounts disagree, so let the other person lead.

Where Grüezi comes in

Our app Grüezi is named after the word, and its first unit, Grüezi! Basics, opens with a lesson on greetings. That unit is free, together with the greetings flashcards, the first two dialogues (at the bakery and at the train station), and the first three dialect comparisons, which include the polite hello across six regions. Many of the greetings above have an audio clip, generated in Zürich dialect.

When you set up the app, you choose your region: Zürich, Bern, Basel, the Wallis and sixteen more, or a general Swiss German. The app’s own words then switch to your dialect group, down to the home screen, which says Grüessech! if you picked Bern and Sali! if you picked Basel.

So the next time someone passes you on a trail with a cheerful Grüezi mitenand, you will know what to say back. Merci vilmal for reading, and uf Widerluege.