Local usage in Venice is ciao as greeting --"hi" --( see below) and ciao
ciao-- "bye bye" --on parting. Even with friends, the first greeting of the
day is usually buongiorno ( or buona sera), and then ciao afterward in the
course of the day. If one happens to pass a friend on the street is a quick
wave and a ciao. Arevederci -- 'see you"-- is a sort of friendly assurance
that you will see them again at some future time.
rjf

"B Vaughan" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 13 Jun 2005 14:50:36 +0100, "Graeme Miller"
wrote:

Conversational Italian now...

The older language tapes suggest that "Ciao" is only for use between
friends
of if you're talking to children. The more modern BBC late night
programmes
sprinkle the greeting around quite liberally as if its got the same
status
as "Hi" in English.

Yes, "ciao" is about as informal as "hi" in English. However, Italians
tend to be a bit more formal than most English speakers. If you're old
enough to remember, you can use the same guidelines that would have
been current in the US up until the mid 1960s. (I don't know what the
watershed years were for formality in the UK.) When I first came to
Italy I used to decide whether to use the formal or familiar verb
forms by thinking whether this person would have been addressed as
"Mr." or "Mrs." by my mother when I was a child.
--
Barbara Vaughan
My email address is my first initial followed by my surname at libero dot
it
I answer travel questions only in the newsgroup