你好
One of the first Chinese words I learned was hello (nihao – 你好). With the ever more popular mandarin variant of the Chinese appearing in movies, many words begin to stick in our minds and 你好 is one of them. I guess it is also proper, since as I prepare myself to live in a Chinese speaking country, hello should be the first thing to be said.
According to Lonely Planet’s Mandarin phrasebook, words in Mandarin are usually composed of two Chinese characters. In the case of 你好, the word is composed of 你 (ni) – YOU and 好 (hao) – WELL. So literally, 你好 means «you well». It is easy to understand how this word is the equivalent of the western hello when you take in consideration that in Asian societies the well being of the group or the others takes precedence over the well being of oneself.
Juan Jose Celada 