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I'm Italian and agree with you. This said, I'm reasonably sure that in countries like Brazil ciao is only used as good bye, so maybe this explains the confusion. FWIW, I've also saw it written as "chao", which made me rofl.



The word has been incorporated into other European languages with spellings that make sense for that language. Other commentators have mentioned the Portuguese, Spanish and German forms. To add to those, I've come across "Čau" in a number of Slavic languages.


Brazilians spell it "tchau" (due to ch representing /ʃ/ rather than /tʃ/ in Portuguese -- like German sch for /ʃ/ and tsch for /tʃ/).


Like any other Portuguese speaking country, it is not Brazilian specific. :)


Funnily enough, in German we do sometimes spell it "Tschau".


"Chao" is used in some spanish-speaking countries for bye. So technically it is not misspelled :-)


"chao" / "chau" exclusively means "bye" in most of Eastern Europe.




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