Lea Faka-Tonga · Lessons

Tongan greetings: Mālō e lelei, and what to say next

The everyday Tongan hello is Mālō e lelei, and the reply is the same words back. It is warmer than it looks in a phrasebook. Mālō means "worthy of praise" or "congratulations", e is the definite article, and lelei means "well" or "good", so the greeting says something closer to "the being-in-good-health is worthy of praise" than to "hi".

That table is the whole exchange in outline. The rest of this page takes each line apart, because the grammar inside these formulas is worth seeing: the two goodbyes are ordinary commands, and the questions about your name and your age are built on a sentence pattern the course teaches in full.

Saying hello, and answering

The reply to Mālō e lelei is Mālō e lelei, usually with ʻio (yes) in front of it.

That ʻio is the right first word in response to any greeting, compliment or farewell. It can stand on its own or lead into something more specific, and a useful way to hear it is "it is as you say".

Asking how someone is

The follow-up question is Fēfē hake? and the stock answer is Sai pē! Neither one is a full sentence with a tense marker; both are fixed formulas.

Fēfē is the question word "how", which the course teaches with the other question words. Hake means "up" or "upward", which gives the question the sense of "how are you getting along?", and it is used especially of someone who has been unwell. In the answer, sai means "good, well, fine" and pē means "just" or "only".

Saying thank you

Thanks in Tongan is the same mālō again, with the thing you are grateful for after it. Mālō e ʻofa says "the kindness is worthy of praise", where ʻofa is love or kindness.

The pattern keeps going with whatever fits the moment. Mālō e ngāue! thanks someone for working, and the answer to any of these is ʻIo!

Good morning, in a formal setting

A longer greeting is used in formal settings, and it is worth memorising whole rather than assembling.

Swap the time word for another part of the day and the formula still works: efiafi ni for this afternoon or evening, pō ni for tonight. The ʻetau inside it is a possessive pronoun meaning "our", including the person you are speaking to.

Which goodbye depends on who is leaving

ʻAlu ā! and Nofo ā! both translate as "goodbye", and you do not get to pick. The person who is leaving and the person who is staying are told different things, and someone going to bed is told a third.

Each one is an ordinary command with ā on the end: ʻalu is "go", nofo is "stay", mohe is "sleep". So you are telling the leaver to go, and the person left behind to stay.

What the ā is doing

Ā is a tonal adverb, meaning a word concerned with the tone of what is said. It has no direct English translation. Without it, ʻAlu! is a bare order, "Go." With it, ʻAlu ā! softens into a warm farewell, "go well". Depending on the tone of voice, ā can make words less abrupt and more polite, or less casual and more emphatic.

In speech a friendly ē often follows, and it changes nothing about the meaning.

Saying it to more than one person

Tongan commands change shape for two people and for three or more, and the farewells follow suit: the bare verb for one, mo plus the verb for two, mou plus the verb for three or more. The plural of "go" is ō, not ʻalu.

Please, excuse me, and sorry

Two words soften a request, and both go at the front of it. Fakamolemole is "pardon" or "excuse me". Kātaki is "please", literally "endure", and on its own it also does the work of "sorry".

Using someone's name

When you address a person by name, ʻe goes in front of the name. It marks direct address, the job English does with a pause and a comma.

It is sometimes dropped in casual speech, and it is always correct to include it. This vocative ʻe is a separate word from the future tense marker ʻe, which is spelled identically and sits in a different place in the sentence, and it is separate again from the article e, which has no fakauʻa at all.

Name and age

Two questions turn up early in almost every first conversation, and both are built on ko, the word Tongan uses to identify one thing as another.

Hingoa is "name", taʻu is "year" or "age", and fiha is "how many". Ho is "your" and hoku is "my", both from the possessive system taught in lesson 17. Until you get there, these four lines work perfectly well learned whole.

The whole exchange, start to finish

Put together, a first meeting runs like this.

Every line there uses grammar the course teaches in order: the ko identification pattern, the ʻio acknowledgement, question words, postposed pronouns, and command forms of the verb.

Practise the exchange

Greetings stick faster when you answer them under a little pressure rather than read them down a list, so the drills below run the exchange both ways round.

• Drill: greet, thank, and respond
• Drill: who leaves, who stays, pick the farewell
• Drill: introduce yourself, name and age
• Lesson 14: greetings and social formulas
• Lesson 17 and the possessives inside these phrases
• How to pronounce the words on this page
• All 52 lessons, free

The Tongan alphabet and pronunciation · Tongan tense markers explained · Tongan word order · Saying "not" in Tongan · Tongan possessives · The Tongan ko pattern