The Difference of Lunar New Year Greetings

The Lunar New Year for 2018 is this Friday, February 16. In China, this is the most important festival for all Chinese. In that day, everyone are likely to greet everyone with some words related to New Year, like Xinnianhao. However, different people like to say a little bit different greetings, which shows their culture and growing environment.

The first difference I notice is that the elders are more likely to say Xinnianhao to others, but the youngers like to say Xinniankuaile to their friends. In general, these two words are the same meaning, and they are both used to wish others to have a good life in the new year. However, there is a little bit difference between Xinnianhao and Xinniankuaile. In Chinese, Xinnianhao means the new year will be very good, and it sounds easy and oral. Xinniankuaile means that you will be happy in the coming new year, and it is formal, just like “Happy New Year.” So why the elders like to use Xinnianhao and the youngers like to use Xinniankuaile? I think this is due to their culture and growing environment. As we all know, in the time of the elders, they were lack of education and the Mandarin was not almostly perfect. People talking with others were used to say the oral Mandarin, which was easy to say and can make the communication more pleasant. So they like to use oral Mandarin to talk with others in their life, but if they need to write some formal stuffs, they will also use the formal Mandarin. For young people, all of them are required by parents to learn formal Mandarin from primary school, helping them be used to express themselves by formal Mandarin. At the same time, in the school, young people always have to do something that requires using formal Mandarin. For example, in my high school, I need to greet neighbors around our school as volunteers, and I was responsible to write an article that included the greeting words to express our blessing to this neighbors. In this article, I had to use the formal kind of greeting, Xinniankuaile, to make this article hearty. In the school, I practice the formal kind of greeting a lot of time, so I like to greet my friend in the same manner.

So for the topic of New Year greetings, I think the elders use Xinnianhao just due to their lifestyle of using oral Mandarin, which can make them comfortable to talk with others. And for youngers, it is the formal Mandarin environment that makes them used to greet others with a formal way, Xinniankuaile. But both of them are used to express people’s best wish for the new year.