Simple question for Monday

[muckefuck]

What is your favourite response to "How are you?"-type questions?
What response(s) would you wink out of existence if you could?

Comments

[porysski.livejournal.com]

"Could be worse."

If I could, I'd get rid of the question itself for non-medical purposes. I don't want strangers knowing how I am, nor do I appreciate that it's not only socially appropriate, but socially mandated for them to ask. (In some cases, it's actually required by their jobs. It is the mandatory customer greeting where I work, for example.)

[muilteag.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you about it all. I think, Hello is the ONLY appropriate GREETING.
As a customer I usually hear "Hi, how're you DOING?" Assuming the greeting is being enforced I make it short and easy for everybody - "Good!:-)" and go straight to business. I think it unnecessary and inadequate to the situation to reciprocate with an "... and yourself?" here.
Nobody really wants to hear anything but GOOD!
I suspect, nobody really wants to be asked back, either.

"How are you?", as far as I know, actually IS reserved for "medical purposes", and should not be used as a greeting. So, even if the cashiers are just trying to save the effort by cutting out the DOING word - they are wrong :-D

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

"I can't complain."

For me the standard "I'll tell you I'm fantastic even though I'm very much NOT" is something I could do without. Why lie right from the opening question? Set phrase or not, it seems disingenuous.

(Mind you, I still prefer it to the Japanese opening question どちらへ？, Dochira e?, "Where are you going?", which is a stock question asked even if you honestly couldn't care where the person is going.)

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Somewhere unreliable, I heard that a classic greeting in China is "have you eaten yet?" If that was a genuine enquiry, I'd prefer it to any of these 'wotcher' equivalents.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

你吃飯了嗎?

Our Chinese teacher was a little taken aback to find we knew about this, because she considers it a rather familiar question--something you'd ask a friend you see regularly but not a social superior, apparently.

The Korean equivalent is 밥먹었어요? and it's also very casual and familiar. There's also a Japanese version.

Whenever this comes up in discussion, there are always some younger American English speakers who have to point out the homegrown version: "Jeet yet?"

[wwidsith.livejournal.com]

Ha, this reminds me of the infamous (probably apocryphal) line with which unwelcome visitors are greeted in Scotland: "You'll have had your tea."

[oh-meow.livejournal.com]

Is it standard in the US to say "great, thanks" even if you're feeling crap? A standard answer in the UK is "alright, thanks" which pretty much means nothing, because it can mean both awful and great.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The only polite answer, according to Miss Manners, is "Fine, and you?" If someone wants more detail, they will say rather, "Now, tell me; how are you really doing?"

[peredur-glyn.livejournal.com]

I had an acquaintance in University who apparently had no knowledge of the expression "hello". She would pass you in the corridor and say "how are you?", and instead of smiling politely you'd have to find a response. Sometimes life is too short for conversations.

I hate "I'm fine" as a response, but saying anything else in the UK (let alone anywhere else) is considered bad form, of course. When I'm feeling anything but fine I'd like to express myself as such, but I tend not to.

In Welsh you get people saying things like "dal i gredu" ("[I]'m still believing"), presumably in God or some benevolent Fate. That's quite annoying, because it's rather evasive, but at least it's reasonably 'Welsh'.

Still, top hatred marks go to "Mustn't grumble" ("fedra i'm cwyno"!), which almost always means the exact opposite.

I think the most interesting thing discourse-pragmatically-speaking about "how are you?" questions is that generally it's a question that expects an answer (so it's not exactly rhetorical) but not a truthful one. If I ask it of someone, I don't expect a life story. That's why I prefer "hello" forms, which are just greetings.

Looking at all the above, I've come to the firm conclusion that I'm a surly bastard. Apols.

[ceirdwenfc.livejournal.com]

You are a surly bastard, but that wasn't the question.

I always say "I'm fine." How I'm actually feeling doesn't matter, but recently a friend of mine said that I'm never fine. When I say "I'm fine," I'm always something else; something negative. If I'm actually fine, I'll use other descriptors like okay, great, good, etc.

I think my father used to say, "still kicking."

[muilteag.livejournal.com]

I can just imagine what saying "I'm fabulous!" (with a triumphant grin) would be considered in the UK :-D
(- they would know you are an american?;-)

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

An old friend of mine, when asked "how are you," would always reply, "Adequate." It's the best response I can recall ever hearing.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I have a coworker with chronic health problems. Whenever I ask her how she is after an illness, she replies, "I'm here." If I press and ask her if she's feeling any better, she'll keep replying, "I'm here" until I get the message.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Where I grew up, this was contracted to 2 syllables: "righ'ree?" To be answered: "e'ep." If you had more time, and were actually friendly with the adressee, you might substitute "je fancy a pin'?" That might be my favourite.
/nostalgia

[itchwoot.livejournal.com]

Wenn mich jemand online fragt, wie es mir geht, antworte ich manchmal mit "geht so". Für mich ist das gleichbedeutend mit "okay" oder "ganz in Ordnung", aber die meisten vermuten dann, dass es mir schlecht geht und fragen noch mal nach, woran es denn hapert. Das ist ein bisschen nervig... ich muss mich dann dran erinnern, dass ich in Zukunft wieder mit "gut" oder "super" antworte.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

I also don't enjoy this as a greeting from someone I don't know. I'll usually answer "Fine." in that situation.

With people I know, I've recently been answering "medium" as a non-committal response when it's not so much a genuine question.

[donncha22.livejournal.com]

"Keeping the good side on the outside," mar a dúirt seanfhear leis an tiománaí bus i nGaillimh.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

1) "*polite smile* Very well, thank you, and you?"

2) Any response other than the above.

[tortipede.livejournal.com]

I used to work in a psychiatric hospital, and whenever staff asked the patients how they were, the answer was almost always 'fine'. Only when a friend of mine was later hospitalized did I find out that the standing joke amongst the patients was that this stood for "Fucked up, insecure, neurotic and emotional." I've since heard variations on this from other sources, but that was the first time I'd come across it.

Kate Fox, in Watching the English, points out that the traditionally correct response to the traditional greeting "How do you do?" is to repeat the question back. "'How do you do?' is not a real question about health or well-being, and 'Nice day, isn't it?' is not a real question about the weather."

So my favourite answer has to be that of the friend of a friend who, having just split up with her boyfriend, treated a passing acquaintance's 'How are you?' as a real question. She snapped back at them, "I'd gladly die!", burst into tears, and turned and stalked off into college.

A close second is an ex-girlfriend of mine who, studying in the US and misled by the apparent sincerity of tone in which someone (at a party) asked how she was, began to give a detailed answer. Part way through her answer her interlocutor exclaimed "Jeez! I only asked how you were -- I didn't want your life history!" and walked off to find someone else to talk to.

And my poor third is my own answer to the one Jamaican student I knew in college. Sean would always ask me "What's happenin', man?", and it took a long time before I worked out that that didn't really require an informative answer, either...

¡Muy bien, gracias!

[ursine1.livejournal.com]

That's my response here to the question: ¿Cómo estás? Usually followed by ¿Y tú? It's considered impolite not to answer here. Another common greeting is ¿Qué tal? (How is it going?) Same answer.

"How are you?" is better than one of the British alternatives: "Are you well?" This can cause some State-siders to wonder if they look "sickly".

Chuck

[wiped.livejournal.com]

one thing i miss about southern california (that doesn't seem to be practiced in atlanta, where i now live) is that the "how are you" greeting has been stripped of any meaning, at least in informal settings and amongst young people, something like "god be with you" becoming "goodbye." "howsitgoin" is a more or less standard greeting, and the response can be "hey," "howsitgoin," or for those who insist on taking it literally, "good/arright/not bad" but without any followup.

i find it annoying when people give a literal (and negative) answer, as in "how are you?" "oh i'm just awful, i have a cold, my dog is dying of breast cancer," etc. i should be used to it by now, as i can't remember a time my grandmother replied to the question without complaining, but it's especially bothersome with strangers or acquaintances. "how are you"/"how's it going?" is just a formality, not a genuine inquiry, and i wish people would treat it as such!

[lifeandstuff.livejournal.com]

"Doing well". Of course, no matter how I feel like I'm really doing. It's upbeat (as i emphasize in my tone), which is the real point. This is almost always a question I get in professional settings and communicating upbeatness is important. :)

Plus, it's in a sense, always true. I'm not dying of some horrible disease (or dead), starving and on the streets, and live in the land of milk and honey. So, no matter how despondant something has me on that particular day, it's hard to argue that in the bigger picture, I'm not doing well. :)