Russian Goodbye

There are two main ways to say goodbye in Russian – one is formal, the other informal.

The formal Russian goodbye is “do svidaniya” (in Cyrillic – до свидания). This literally means, “until we meet”. “Do svidaniya” is pronounced “duh svi dah nee yeh”.

The informal word for goodbye in Russian is “Poka”. (in Cyrillic – пока). This should be used mainly between people who know each other quite well, or by young people. It is pronounced “pa-ka”.

On this website you will find a number of interesting articles explaining how to learn Russian. A companion to this article on the Russian goodbye is our article on how to say and pronounce a good Russian hello!