A Comparative Study of Tagalog and Mandarin Greetings

Abstract

Greetings play an essential role in everyday conversational routines and are commonly used as a ritual form of politeness. They serve an important function in building and maintaining social relationships. Greetings often consist of brief conventionalized expressions that are not necessarily meant to be interpreted literally, but rather are used as a tool to demonstrate politeness or to enhance the hearer's positive face. This paper aimed to make a brief comparison between Tagalog and Mandarin greetings in terms of phonology, morphology and syntax, meanwhile, greetings as linguistic routines of politeness, similarities and differences of nonverbal greetings in the Philippines and China will be analyzed. It will be helpful for those who want to learn one of these two languages and also be useful for those who want to have a basic knowledge about Filipino and Chinese greeting culture.