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Is there any difference in meaning, formality, tone, or otherwise between the "good morning" greetings 早安 and 早上好? Or just regional preferences? (I'm thinking perhaps the former may be more common in Taiwan and the latter more common in Mainland China and/or northern China but I'm not sure.)

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  • I see no difference between 早上好 and 早安. Even more, you can simply say 安 or 早 instead.
    – eccstartup
    Jul 21, 2013 at 11:18
  • Almost no difference, only "早上好" is more speech-styled, and "早安" is more formal. Jul 22, 2013 at 3:04
  • Actually, you could just use one character “早” as the same meaning
    – user3002
    Jul 23, 2013 at 5:52

5 Answers 5

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From the accepted answer at Baidu:

Both are words of greeting. Nowadays people generally use “早上好”. “早安” will give a feeling of before 民国 (the Republic of China (1912-1949)), or a literary feeling (it's common in literature).

Other people think 早安 has a warmer feeling.

Of course this is the perspective of mainland people.

In Taiwan 早安 is used much more than 早上好. (Ratio: 28, Google advanced search: exact phrase, country TW, language zh-TW)

  • "早安" 5,340,000
  • "早上好" 192,000

In the mainland, incidentally, 早安 is also used much more than 早上好, although the degree of usage seems much closer. (Ratio: 2.3, Google advanced search: exact phrase, country CN, language zh-CN)

  • "早安" 24,500,000
  • "早上好" 10,400,000
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  • 2
    +1 for thinking to use search results as an indicator of use/popularity.
    – user3871
    Jan 15, 2013 at 15:25
  • This is interesting because in Taiwan I always hear 早安 but people I know from Beijing say 早上好. The people from Beijing happened to be highly educated, so I wonder if 早上好 tends to be a more upper class (for lack of a better term) way of saying it.
    – Dan
    Jan 15, 2013 at 19:14
  • @Dan no. I am from Beijing and I can confirm 早上好 is commonly used by all social groups. 早安 (or 早) sounds Southern-ish to us.
    – NS.X.
    Jan 15, 2013 at 20:34
  • @BertR I know people in Southern China say 早安 but they fall into zh-CN not zh-TW, which might explain the numbers.
    – NS.X.
    Jan 15, 2013 at 20:37
  • 5
    Be aware that search results would have a bias towards written forms of the language, as opposed to the spoken form. Jun 18, 2013 at 3:15
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Slightly off-topic, an alternative to 早安 in Taiwan is "吃飯了沒有?", literally "have you eaten, yet? " . You may hear this more among older folks who experienced lean times in their youth, and also reflects generosity of the speaker.

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早安 is more literary, it's used more frequently in written form like novel and poems as well as articles, blogs and tweets. That's why Google gives more results.

Oral, we say 早上好 more.

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    Edit more information into your answer please! At the very least, whether you're from the mainland or taiwan. Jul 21, 2013 at 18:19
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Generally people in Taiwan and Hongkong write in traditional chinese while people in Mainland China mostly write in simplified chinese.

Chinese in mainland speak mandarin. We speak 早上好 more often.

People in Hong Kong and Guangzhou speak Cantonese, which is much more ancient Chinese, they greet with 早晨. Cantonese sounds totally different than mandarin, almost like a different language.

People in Taiwan speak mostly mandarin, they say 早安, means safe , in peace

For detailed information:http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/正體字

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  • (1) Simplified Chinese 簡體字 and Traditional Chinese 正體字 are always referring to the written character set, never to the spoken language / dialect (Mandarin/Cantonese).
    – John Siu
    Jan 16, 2013 at 4:11
-4

早安 is Chinese for the English "good morning" and used in China everywhere.

早上好 is the creation of machine translation of English "good morning" and is probably used by translation machines.

I am a native Chinese speaking person and have travelled all over the world and I have never been greeted by anyone with "早上好".

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  • please list evidence, but not just rely on your own language sense.
    – Stan
    Jun 14, 2013 at 0:15
  • I mean, 早上好 is the creation of machine translation of English, this might be true, but need a proof.
    – Stan
    Jun 14, 2013 at 0:22

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