Come usare ciao, buongiorno e gli altri saluti
A1 Italian listening practice · Italian · Curated for beginners
When do you switch from “buongiorno” to “buonasera”?
Italian sorts its polite greetings by the clock, not by hello-versus-goodbye. Buongiorno (“good day”) carries you through the morning, then sometime around midday or early afternoon people slide into buonasera (“good evening”) — long before it’s actually dark. Late at night, buonanotte closes the day. Unlike a casual ciao, all three work with strangers, so the only real decision is what time it is.
There’s no official switchover hour — the clip’s “after 13:00, start saying buonasera” is a clean A1 rule of thumb, but in practice it drifts: northerners may wait for the light to fade, while parts of the south greet with buonasera as early as mid-afternoon. Buonanotte is the one fixed point — it only ever closes a conversation, never opens one, because it means the day is over. For leaving, the clip pairs these with arrivederci (or formal arrivederla), keeping the time-of-day greetings for the moment you arrive.