What to say when you meet someone

Before we start with words and phrases, let me point out one difference between the US and Germany that I experienced during my stays in California: If an American meets someone for the first time, you'll often (or actually always) here a sentence like: "Nice to meet you!" after the introduction. In Germany, this is hardly heard unless under very formal circumstances. It is not considered rude to omit the German equivalent of "Nice to meet you" (being "Schön Sie kennenzulernen." -- don't worry about that now). To the contrary: If you use the phrase whenever you meet someone, you will probably provoke strange looks, although occasionally we use the phrase, too. One example where it's perfectly normal (and maybe even expected) to say "Nice to meet you" in Germany is when you have heard about the person(s) a lot and finally get to meet them.

Now that this is off my chest, let's dive right into the greeting, shall we?

1. Formal Greetings

If you either haven't met a person before, or if you don't know him or her very well, you would start a conversation by wishing that person a "Good morning", "Good afternoon", or "Good evening", respectively. The hardly heard "Good day" in California is the standard greeting in Germany:

In general, however, we Germans are lazy, so we mostly use short forms of the above terms: Instead of "Guten Morgen", we only use the second word "Morgen" (meaning "morning") as a greeting. Note that the voice goes down at the end of the word, just as if it was used in a complete sentence. I have heard the same "short form" in the US, too (that is "Morning."), albeit very rarely.

The same is true for "Guten Tag". The short form "Tag" (meaning day) is used often.

If you use those short forms, you will not be considered impolite, however, be careful if you try to use the short form of "Guten Abend". Surprisingly, the short form is not "Abend" but "'n Abend" (which sounds like "nabend"). The "n" here is important and is "stolen" from the first word "guten". It is not optional. If you say "Abend" without the "n" you will see some confused faces. Anyway, here you can listen to the short forms:

The above words and phrases are also used in informal conversations, but we have some more used more often in the informal case.

2. Informal Greetings

In Germany, we have by and large adopted some greetings from the US. Namely, among friends you will often hear a "Hi" when they greet each other. You would rarely use "Hi" if you meet someone for the first time, though.

The most common informal greeting in Germany, however, is "Hallo", which is the equivalent to your "hello". It is pronounced slightly different, so here you can listen to it:

What remains for greetings is how to say goodbye, so let's take a look at that, too.

3. Saying Goodbye

As with greetings, we have some phrases for saying goodbye in a formal way and some to informally say goodbye to friends or family. Let's start with the more formal ones, first.

If visiting a shop or eating at a restaurant, after paying you usually wish the waiter or clerk a pleasant evening or weekend and then you formally say goodbye to him by wishing "to see him again", the German equivalent to goodbye:

When saying goodbye to a friend or a relative, "Auf Wiedersehen" is almost never used. Instead, we most commonly use the word "Tschüß", roughly conforming to the British "cheerio" (although in "Dinner for One", the butler James says "Cheerio, Miss Sophie" whenever he raises his drinking goblet). In Germany, the only meaning of "Tschüß" is an informal goodbye. And you use it, whenever you know that you are going to see the person again soon. As for the pronounciation, there are a lot of different accents in Germany and everyone uses it a little differently. Here, in the Cologne area, "Tschö" is pretty common, but "Tschüß" is also understood without any problems. Also very common is the italian version "Ciao" (a German would write "Tschau"). Why don't you listen to the three of them:

Also common are phrases like "take care" or "see you later". In German, you'd say "Mach's gut!" or "Bis dann!", respectively. For example, if I am on the phone, talking to a good friend, I'd usually end the call with "Mach's gut!", or, if I knew, I'd see him or her in the next couple of days, because we just discussed when to meet again, then I could also say "Bis dann!". It really depends on how good a friend he is and what mood I am in. Both are perfectly valid phrases to express my friendship to the person on the other end of the line.
In a face-to-face conversation, I can also use both phrases. I'd use "Mach's gut!" if I anticipated to not see the other person for a longer period and "Bis dann!" if I thought to see him again pretty soon. Mind that the time expressions here are pretty vague. A "longer period" might be a day, whereas "pretty soon" might mean "next week" -- it really all depends on the situation. Don't worry about it, too much, though. You can use both expressions interchangeably.