"Jó napot, László!"

Please, can a Hungarian person explain, when they use "Jo reggelt" and when they use "Jo napot". Ends the usage of "jo reggelt" at 12am, and then starts the usage of "jo napot", or what else. Thank you for answering.

jzsuzsi

Mod

Jó reggelt until 9 or 10 am... But it also depends on the person, and on what time do you get up :P

Köszönöm szépen - hahaha. Then for me it starts at noon.

MrtonPolgr

Not really. Reggel is when you think someone hasn't woken up a lot of time ago. If someone has been doing daily routine work for hours, that's probably not "reggel", at least I would feel ashamed to greet someone with "jó reggelt" when I know they have been working for hours. Then jó napot till it starts to get darker and the active period is about to end.

Köszönöm szépen. I understand, I think there is not very much difference like in German usage. When I go to breakfast into a hotel, the staff says to me "Jo reggelt", but they have worked since a long time, shall i answer with "jo reggelt" or better with "jo napot"?

MrtonPolgr

I think if they are willing to say "jó reggelt", it's like they conform to a "most reggel van" narrative and it's more natural to accept it as a state of fact than kinda insist on it's "nap" already. I think overriding this kind of information at greeting feels a bit like confronting the other and it never really sounds nice to me. Formalities are all about conforming and accepting details without giving them too much weight.

Köszi, jó éjszakát, kívánok.

I think you meant "Jó estét".

MartaOsko

Ich denke, die Übersetzung hier ist interessant. Afternoon ist eher Nachmittag. Ok jó napot kann man sagen aber ich denke hier habe ich öfters good noon gelesen, was mich selbst überrascht hat. Aber warum ist das auf einmal falsch? Übrigens, in Ungarn trennt man die Zeiten nicht so streng wie in der deutsche Sprache. So ähnlich wie morning, kann man jó napot bis Abend sagen. LG Marta

July 30, 2020

For townies - maybe stop using "Jo reggelt" at 9am - no later. For country people in summer I have been corrected at 8am - they have already been working for 3 hours.

You can use "Jo reggelt" then until the evening.

Hello Judit, you look so personal; no I really meant "Jo ejszakát", because three hours later and I could have said "Jo reggelt". Are you Englisch or Hungarian or something else? Greetings from Germany.

You usually say "Jo ejszakát" when you leave someone to go to bed. It's a farewell rather than a greeting (usually).

I was born in New Zealand to Hungarian parents who decided not to speak Hungarian in front of the children so we could be "real" NZers. For the last 15 years I have been spending 2-3 months in Hungary each year and recently also attending a language school.

Ok, then I was right, I wanted (or had to go) to go to bed. That's great, your life. It would have been better, that you learnt Hungarian from the parents. Hungarian is such a difficult language, but surely you have it in your genetic factor.

Robert667015

Jó napot means Good day, not Good afternoon!!

December 5, 2017

mizinamoPlus

That's what you get when you translate the words literally, but translation is more than just replacing words -- the result also has to make sense.

And in English we usually don't use "good day" as a greeting -- if it's used, then usually as a farewell.

So a translation that preserves the sense will be "good afternoon", because that's the phrase that most English speakers would use as a greeting between noon and perhaps five or six o'clock p.m.

December 6, 2017