- Forum >
- Topic: Russian >
- "Hello, Ivan."
"Hello, Ivan."
Translation:Здравствуй, Иван.
33 Comments
Hello, everyone. I am a native Russian speaker. Some people ask what does this "Алло" mean. So, you CANNOT use "Алло" talking with any person at the street, market, restaurant and so on. You can use the word "Алло" only if you talk by mobile and telephone. For example, someone is calling, you are going to take a mobile and then say "Yes? "Who is that?" "Hello?" and so on. İn English you may use different types but in Russian almost everyone use ONLY "Алло" when the conversation my telephone begins.
I suspect these are all loan words based on the English word "hello," and that they came into the language along with the telephone, since the telephone was an American invention. Which would be it's specific to the telephone in those languages, but not in English.
Bell telephone included a manual on telephone etiquette along with the early phones, because people were baffled by this object that you picked up and shouted at. And the Russian phone dialogue that's described follows the recommended opening dialogue fairly well.
I have a suspicion that those manuals were translated into other languages fairly literally.
205
The te is a formal thing. Hello without the te is informal, but more formal then привет.
414
I support the view that алло is a viable answer given the lack of context, and the fact that several of the phrases use it in an ambiguous fashion, eg "алло, вы вера ивановна?"
355
If one is using the more formal greeting здравствуйте, would one almost always address the person by name/имя and patronymic/отчество, or is it more complicated than that?