Most greetings in the Earth Kingdom are variations of the traditional phrases although they vary the most out of any of the other languages depending on class and region.
Proto-Earth-ese = [1st/3rd.they] [greet] [2nd] (”I/One greets you”)
(‘1st’ is used when it’s one person and ‘3rd.they’ is used when the speaker is one of a group)
The lower upper-classes/middle classes are the ones who are the most likely to use this phrase properly.
Northern Earth-ese keeps this phrasing for the most part but Southern Earth-ese includes plural suffixes instead of ‘3rd.they’. So [1st(-plural)] [greet] [2nd(-plural)] (”I/We greet you/y’all”). Northern Earth-ese has a plural adjective but it’s only used for emphasis.
While Earth-ese doesn’t like dropping pronouns, in more casual situations you can drop the ‘you’. In much more casual situations, especially amongst lower middle-class people, family, or younger people you can just say ‘greet’.
In more formal situations amongst the upper-class, you make it fancier: ([Declare]) [1st/3rd.they] ([great]) [greet] [2nd] ([great]) (”I declare the great I/One greets the great you.”), usually first addressing someone by their full title.
Ba Sing Se is notoriously amongst the Earth Kingdom for preserving the whole thing and elaborating on it. In rougher areas, it’s often a game/joke to put on an Upper Ring accent and make it as long as you can.
Proto-Earth-ese = [Command] [leave/stay] [good/happy] (”Leave/Stay well”)
(The use of ‘leave’ or ‘stay’ depends on who in the conversation is leaving.)
Southern Earth-ese slang tends to replace the ‘command’ with their context word for ‘invitation’ or in some Northern Earth-ese middle-class communities you use ‘request’.
In very Southern Earth-ese areas, it’s shortened to = [Leave/Stay-invite] (”Please leave/stay”) although it’s not interpreted as an actual command/invitation.
While Kyoshi Island is in the South, its Earth-ese is closer of Ba Sing Se Earth-ese so its standard greeting is = [Declare] [greet] (”I declare this greeting”) while its farewell is = [Declare] [leave/stay] (”I declare this leaving/staying”).
Around Omashu, they’ve abandoned this format entirely, using the Proto-Earth-ese word [Love] instead. It’s related to the story of Oma and Shu and how the person they see would be (their) love. In the Southern Earth Kingdom, they replaced the verb with another word.
Lower Ring people use = [You] [resemble] [good/happy] (”You look well”) or = [Hope] [good/happy] [be] (”Hope you’re well”). Although, some people often replaced ‘good/happy’ with ‘bad’ or something insulting as a joke to the point it became a sincere greeting in many areas.
Variations of ‘Oi’ and ‘Ai’ (”Hey!”) are common across the Earth Kingdom to quickly get someone’s attention. They’re considered rude in polite company.
For ‘goodbye’, a common phrase is [True] [jewel] [inside] [a] [chest] = (”Jewels go in a chest”). This generally implies that while it’s a shame to leave, you had a nice time.
Sandbender/Si Wong Earth-ese
The usual greeting is “I see you”, which came about after communicating with each other within dust storms.
[Now-1st-2nd-drift] [see] ~> [Y(a)-(j)ei-su-(yum)en] [lowk(in)-(k)oo] ~> “Yungsen luku!”
Sandbender Earth-ese is almost completely unintelligible to most other forms of Earth-ese. I’ll probably do a more complicated post but it combined context words into an auxiliary verb at the beginning which shows the tense and pronouns of what follows.
‘Goodbye’ is the equivalent of “Cover your eyes”, telling someone to prepare for the dust storm = [See-plural] [cover-3rd.they]. (‘See’ with a plural suffix means ‘eyes’ and adding the ‘3rd.they’ pronoun to the end of a verb turns it into the passive adjective form e.g. ‘cover’ ~> ‘covered’)
Fire Nation Occupied Areas
The Earth-ese natives were forced to say “(Faiya Gazri) Ozai vo loki” (”Hail (Fire Lord) Ozai”) in greeting and farewell but in the pidgin they began to borrow, “Utan” (from ‘good morning/afternoon/night). It just means ‘good’ but it was what connected the various Fire-ese greetings. (If you want to actually describe something as ‘good’ in the pidgin you’d usually use ‘utu’, which is the un-conjugated version).
As ‘Helo’ and ‘Kahgu’ became more common throughout the Earth Kingdom, a blacklash occurred against ‘losing the Earth-ese identity’ and ‘homogenising with the rest of the world’, especially amongst those who disliked the United Republic. In the Upper and Middle Rings in Ba Sing Se, many people insisted on the old greetings. Then, once the Earth Empire rose up, they popularised new phrases along with other Zhaofu-based vocabulary to replace loanwords.
The new greeting/farewell they decided on was = [Move-in.front] (”Moving forwards”). It’s used as a call and response like, “Moving forwards?” “Moving forwards.”
While Wu’s supporters often brought back the traditional greetings, after the Earth Empire’s collapse most people either embraced the UR greetings or, usually if they were older, returned to what had been popular in their area beforehand.
