Essential Marathi Greetings: Namaskar and Beyond

You're stepping into a Pune office for the first time, or meeting your Marathi colleague's parents at a Mumbai gathering. Your first word sets the tone. In Maharashtra, that first word is almost always the same one: नमस्कार (Namaskar). Not नमस्ते (Namaste), which you might expect from Bollywood and Hindi cultural exports. नमस्कार. The distinction matters to Maharashtrians more than most outsiders realize.

This is the core greeting set you need, the phrases Maharashtrians use every day, the formal-informal split, the time-of-day forms, and the casual Mumbaikar openers that never appear in textbooks.

नमस्कार, The Universal Marathi Greeting

नमस्कार (Namaskar) [nəməskaːr] is how Maharashtrians greet each other in almost every context: stepping into a shop, seeing a neighbor, opening a formal meeting, welcoming a guest into the home. It comes paired with joined palms, the gesture that Marathi speakers call हात जोडणे (hāt joḍaṇe, joining hands).

The gesture matters as much as the word. Palms together, thumbs pointed slightly toward your own chest, a small nod of the head. It's the same physical form as the Sanskrit añjali mudrā, and Maharashtrians read the sincerity of the gesture alongside the sound of the word.

Why not नमस्ते? The short answer: नमस्ते (Namaste) is the form more common in Hindi-speaking regions. In Maharashtra, its use signals someone who either learned Hindi first or is performing a generic "Indian greeting" rather than a specifically Marathi one. Maharashtrians use नमस्ते themselves (it isn't wrong) but नमस्कार is the home-register choice. Saying नमस्कार to a Marathi speaker in Mumbai or Pune communicates that you know whose culture you're in.

There is also नमस्कार as a farewell, not just a greeting. Like aloha in Hawaiian, it works in both directions. The context (arriving or leaving) determines how it's received.

Well-Being Questions: The Gender Split

After the opening greeting, the next natural move is asking how someone is doing. This is where Marathi's three-gender system creates a fork in the road. The question changes depending on the gender of the person you're asking:

Situation	Marathi	Romanization	IPA	English
Formal (to anyone)	कसे आहात?	kase āhāt?	/kəseː aːɦaːt/	How are you?
To a man, informal	कसा आहेस?	kasā āhes?	/kəsaː aːɦes/	How are you? (to him)
To a woman, informal	कशी आहेस?	kaśī āhes?	/kəʃiː aːɦes/	How are you? (to her)
To a child (neuter)	कसं आहेस?	kasaṃ āhes?	/kəsəm aːɦes/	How are you? (to a child)

The formal form कसे आहात? is your safe choice in any uncertain situation. The informal forms (कसा, कशी, कसं) are for people you'd address with तू, and the adjective कसा (how/what kind) agrees with the gender of the person you're asking about, not with you the speaker.

The standard reply is मी मजेत आहे (mī majet āhe) [miː mədʒeːt aːɦeː] ("I'm doing well") or the shorter बरं आहे (baraṃ āhe) [bərəm aːɦeː], "fine" / "okay." मजेत literally means "in fun/pleasure", a more cheerful baseline than a flat "fine."

If someone asks you and you want to return the question, the simplest form is आणि तुम्ही? (āṇi tumhī?) [aːɳi tumɦiː], "And you?" (formal). Or आणि तू? (āṇi tū?) [aːɳi tuː] in casual settings.

Time-of-Day Greetings

Marathi has time-specific greetings, though they're used more deliberately than their English equivalents. You don't automatically say good morning to every person you pass, that's not the Marathi social norm. These are used when opening a conversation, particularly in professional or formal settings, or as a warmer variant of नमस्कार.

Time	Marathi	Romanization	IPA	English
Morning (until about noon)	सुप्रभात	suprabhāt	/suprəbʱaːt/	Good morning
Afternoon	शुभ दुपार	śubh dupār	/ʃubʱ dupaːr/	Good afternoon
Evening	शुभ संध्याकाळ	śubh sandhyākāḷ	/ʃubʱ sənɖʱjaːkaːɭ/	Good evening
Night (parting)	शुभ रात्री	śubh rātrī	/ʃubʱ raːtriː/	Good night

सुप्रभात (suprabhāt) is the most common of these in practice, used in WhatsApp messages, office greetings, and school contexts. शुभ रात्री (śubh rātrī) is more of a parting phrase, you'd say it when leaving, not as a greeting to someone you just encountered at night.

The prefix शुभ (śubh, auspicious/good) appears throughout Marathi formal greetings and festive wishes, you'll encounter it in festival greetings like शुभ दिवाळी (śubh Divāḷī) and गुढीपाडव्याच्या शुभेच्छा (Guḍhīpāḍavyācyā śubhecchā, Gudi Padwa wishes). It's a marker of formality and warmth combined.

Farewells: Saying Goodbye in Marathi

Goodbyes in Marathi are less elaborately differentiated than greetings. The most common farewell is simply येतो (yeto) [jeːtoː], which literally means "I'm going" but functions as "see you / goodbye." Women say येते (yete) [jeːteː], the feminine form. This is one of those Marathi social habits that surprises learners: you announce your departure using a first-person verb rather than wishing the other person well.

More explicit farewells:

Marathi	Romanization	English
नमस्कार	Namaskar	Goodbye (same word, closing use)
येतो / येते	yeto / yete	I'm off / See you (m/f)
उद्या भेटू	udyā bheṭū	See you tomorrow
परत भेटू	parat bheṭū	See you again
जपून राहा	japūn rāhā	Take care (polite)

जपून राहा (japūn rāhā, take care) carries genuine warmth and is the kind of send-off you'd give someone leaving on a long trip, or an elder saying goodbye to a younger person they care about. It lands differently than "have a good day."

Casual Mumbaikar Openers

Standard greetings get you through formal situations. Informal Mumbai Marathi has its own set of openers that don't appear in textbooks but are everywhere in actual conversation. These come from the city's particular culture, fast, code-mixed, cheerful.

काय चाललंय? (kāy cāllaṃy?) [kaːj tʃalːəmj], "What's going on?" / "What's up?"

This is the Mumbai casual equivalent of a greeting. You'd say it to a college friend, a younger cousin, a colleague you're close with. Literally it means "what is happening" (the verb चालणे, to go/happen, in continuous form). The common reply is बरं चाललंय (baraṃ cāllaṃy) [bərəm tʃalːəmj], "Going fine" / "All good."

काय रे? (kāy re?) [kaːj reː] (said to a man) or काय गं? (kāy gaṃ?) [kaːj gəm], said to a woman. Both translate roughly as "hey, what's up?" with the particles रे and गं functioning as gender-coded informal address markers. रे is for men, गं is for women, and both signal that you're on intimate terms. Using these with someone you've just met, or with an elder, would be startlingly casual.

अरे! (are!) [əreː] or अगं! (agaṃ!) [əgəm], pure interjections, the Marathi equivalent of "hey!" when you spot a friend across the room. Same gender split as above.

These openers reflect a real cultural fact about Mumbai Marathi: the city's version of the language is warmer, louder, and more code-mixed than the Pune literary standard. The comparison of Mumbai and Pune Marathi registers goes deeper into this divide if you want to understand why the same language sounds so different on the Western Express Highway versus in Sadashiv Peth.

Why Greetings Work Differently in Maharashtrian Culture

One thing visitors notice: Maharashtrians don't always exchange long greeting rituals with everyone. In a market stall, the transaction starts fast. In a neighbor's building corridor, a nod and a "नमस्कार" might be the full interaction. This isn't coldness, it's register-appropriate compression. The elaborate, multi-question greeting sequence (asking after health, family, work) is reserved for people you know well or are meeting formally after a gap.

The exception is a home visit. If you go to a Maharashtrian family's home, the greeting sequence expands: नमस्कार, कसे आहात, please sit, have tea, and the tea is not optional in the same way it might be elsewhere. Refusing the initial offer of tea (the first offer, anyway) is handled with a warm नको, धन्यवाद (nako, dhanyavād, "no thank you"), which uses नको rather than नाही for the refusal, a distinction that the Marathi negation guide for नाही, नको, and नका explains. A second insistence usually means you accept.

Learning the greeting set is the quickest way to move from being someone who studies Marathi to someone who uses Marathi. The vocabulary in this post takes about twenty minutes to memorize. The social texture takes longer, but it starts with नमस्कार.

The Learn Marathi app by Brightwood Apps covers all of these greetings in the first unit, with native Pune-accent audio for both the formal and informal forms, so your first sounds come from a real speaker, not a text-to-speech engine.