Russian for hello.

“Привет!” is pronounced “priv-yet!” and is a fairly informal way of saying hello, a bit like saying “hi!” to your friends.

A word of warning – don’t follow your “hi!” with “how are you?” unless you want to hear a very accurate account of recent events in the Russian’s life. Similarly, if a Russian asks you how you are, a simple “Great!” is unlikely to suffice. It seems that this question still actually means something in Russia…