ni hao (你好) / nin hao (您好) (2024)

Actually we don't often say "nihao" to the people we know in the ordinary life, instead, we probably say something else, like "haojiubujian" or "zuijin zenmeyang". "nihao" is somewhat like an artificial word, I guess.

To the strainger, it's better to say "ninhao", because you can't say something you can share with him/her.

Only personal opinion, hope to help.

persiano said:

Are Chinese people generally not very polite to each other? Or is there some other reason for this?

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Yes, not so polite. This country has been suffering from the aftermath of the notorious Cultural Revolution launched by mao, which completely ravaged the land of courtesy (the exceptions are Taiwan, Hong Kong etc.). With the improvement of its economy in recent decade, however, the situation begins to change.

persiano said:

I've bought many Pimsleur courses (French, German, Russian, Persian, Turkish, Hindi, Pashto, Indonesian) over the years and one thing all of them have in common is that they start off with the polite form of address. The only exception is Pimsleur Mandarin, which teaches 你好 instead of 您好. Are Chinese people generally not very polite to each other? Or is there some other reason for this?

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If this was a serious question, then I disagree that 你好 is less polite than 您好.
I agree with Bojon #4. "Actually we don't often say "nihao" to the people we know in the ordinary life". To me, 你好 is like a standard translation of "hello" and only used as "greetings", which means it is already polite.

And the word 您 has very different popularities from place to place.
A Beijinger probably use 您 a lot.
A Tianjiner probably use 怹tan1 instead of ta1 as a polite third person pronoun. I'm sure 90% native Chinese have never heard of 怹, and no textbook for foreigners will teach this.
However, here in my dialect (just 3 hrs drive away), 您 and 怹 simple do not exist. To address senior people politely, one of the common corresponding polite form is 你老.

I will write my way of using "你好" and "您好" for your reference.

If (I'm sure someone is older than me, and I want to respect him or her),
I would greet him or her "您好";
If (I'm sure someone is older than me, but I don't know him or her so much),
sometimes I would use his or her appellation to greet him or her, e.g. 叔叔好;
sometimes I just give him or her a friendly smile;
sometimes I would introduce myself, then checking his or her reaction;
sometimes I want him or her be friendly to me, I would greet them "您好";
If (I'm sure someone isn't older than me, no matter which feeling I have),
sometimes I would say "你好" to him or her;
sometimes just a friendly smile.

If (I'm not sure his or her age),
(serious case) finding his or her information from my friends
(normal case) I would greet him or her "你好", then introducing myself, trying to make a conversation.

That's all. Of course, I have special cases. But I don't want to explain them too much by writing.

persiano said:

Is it okay to use 您 in all situations? I mean, can we play it safe by using 您?

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Yes, it is. “您” is a very safe word.
But be careful, some girls look older than their age, some of them would be feel terrible when you greet them by "您好".

It's no standard answer. If you really meet the person who is angry at you (you greeted him or her by "您好"), you can say "对不起。我觉得你看上去很成熟，所以我才用了您好"
and if you meet the person who is angry at you (by "你好"), you can say "对不起。我觉得你的皮肤看上去很有弹性，很年轻，所以我才用了你好"
That's all of suggestions from me.

I would say it's always OK to use 您好 to greet strangers except when addressing kids.

Also, I don't consider 你好 impolite. After all, politeness isn't reflected solely in words or phrases. It has to do with one's overall manners.