Before saying how are you in English, let’s talk a little about the importance of this language.
English is a very important language, it is even considered worldwide as the most necessary; With this we can defend ourselves in any part of the world, in addition many books come in this language and it is becoming more common for university and postgraduate courses to send the reading of different texts and books in English; many people speak this language as their first language and many more have it as their second, that is, they learned it as a secondary language to their mother tongue.
The reality is that the English speakers who have this language as the official language of their country are not a majority, Chinese and Spanish have more speakers, but when we talk about seeing people who dominate or speak some English, we realize that there is no language that wins
So then, English is present around the world and is the outstanding form of communication between different cultures, which even do not share features.
The official language of England is English and from there comes its name; The conquest of this country to different territories both in Europe and outside of it, made English expand more to the point of making it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world.
The countries that speak English within Europe, of course apart from England, are: Ireland, Scotland and Wales; In the American Continent we have the United States, Canada and Jamaica, in addition they also speak it in South Africa and various regions of the Oceanic continent; there are some variations in accent, pronunciation and word.
India accepted English as one of its official languages; It would be the only Asian country that considers it so, since there was a good presence of the English in India, which contributed to the spread of this language.
In each region, English covers several basic needs, for example, it is the form of communication of those who inhabit the region, in addition to establishing it as the official language to write governmental or legal texts.
In some countries this language occurred naturally and in others it turned out to be imposed with less or greater force; It should be noted that there are languages that have taken many elements from English, even if they come from different branches. This is the case, for example, of Irish, which comes from Celtic, while English is Anglo-Saxon.
English, as time went by, became a very important language worldwide, this is because it is the official language of the United States, a very important country in the world economy; Since the end of the 19th century and throughout the 20th century, the English language began to expand and spread until it became the most important, even displacing languages such as Italian, French and even German, which were of great tradition in artistic and scientific fields; The phenomenon of globalization caused English to expand strongly in the world, thus becoming the most necessary and important language of the present time, since English is the official language of the countries that dominate the world the most, which are England and USA.
The same consumption of a cultural type helped the spread of English, this is how music, movies and series contributed to a great extent, and of course, also the economic, diplomatic and political spheres and this is how it became popular, even about the different native languages of various places.
It is already common to notice that some words in English are accepted within some other language; We find concepts, phrases, idioms and colloquial words, which occur even where people hardly speak the English language.
For all of the above, it is very important to train and learn English, or improve the level, because in addition to being useful in labor matters, it is an excellent form of communication that allows us to access more information and knowledge.
Without a doubt, the words that we must first learn in English or any other language is How are you in English, because it is with the phrase that we would basically start any conversation, it is the most important greeting to start an exchange of words, either with people Known or unknown, if you decided to start a conversation in English with an online contact, it will also be quite necessary to know this significant phrase.
Between parentheses we will put its pronunciation in IPA (English), AFI (Spanish), which is a phonetic alphabet that is international; it will be the phonetic form of how these words and phrases should be said; let’s remember that phonetic notations or transcriptions are different graphic symbols that serve to represent human speech, this is the way anyone can understand how to pronounce something. This alphabet created by different linguists, teachers, speech therapists (speech therapists), translators, therapists and lexicographers, has a clear purpose and is able, in a unique and precise way, to represent the different sounds of all languages; contains an approximation of 107 basic symbols and 55 modifications.
Let’s look at the informal form of this greeting
If you need to use a formal greeting, either because you are a business man or woman, to address older people or those who connote more respect, you should start your greeting this way.
- Hello: Hello ( həˈloʊ )
- How are you?: How are you?, (haʊɑr ju?) or you can also express yourself with the following phrase.
- How are you doing?: How are you doing? (haʊ ɑr ju ˈduɪŋ?) It is very important that you be clear about this last sentence and that you do not confuse it with what are you doing? (wʌt ɑr ju ˈduɪŋ ?), because with the latter you would really be asking him what he is doing.
- How are you doing with everything? How’s everything going? (haʊz ˈɛvriˌθɪŋ ˈgoʊɪŋ?): could also be another form of greeting; You could also ask the same thing with the phrase How is everything? (haʊ ɪz ˈɛvriˌθɪŋ ?)
If you meet or are going to meet a person who must be treated with great respect and you haven’t seen them for a long time, you should proceed to greet them in this way.
- What’s new?: How’ve you been? (How’veju bɪn ?)
- How long without seeing each other!?: How long has it been? (haʊlɔŋ hæz ɪt bɪn ?)
- It’s always a pleasure to see you (ɪtsˈɔlˌweɪz ə ˈplɛʒər tu si ju)
Now let’s look at the informal form of this greeting.
The informal mode is to greet close people, friends, family and those who are the same age, for them you can express yourself in the following ways:
- What’s up?: Hey! (heɪ )
- Hello: Hi (haɪ )
- Another way to start a greeting is with the expression What’s up…?, (wʌtsʌp …?) where the name of the person you are going to greet will be added, you would be telling them what in Spanish would be ¿Qué tal…?
- You can say that it gives you joy to see the person with this phrase: Hey, good to see you. (heɪ, gʊd tu si ju)
Short forms of how are you in English
There are moments that are truly informal, it is there when it becomes normal to use the shorter forms of greeting.
- In Spanish it is very common for us to ask how life is treating us and perhaps you thought it was not possible to translate it into English, but we tell you that you can do it using the following phrase: How’s life been treating you? (haʊzlaɪf bɪn ˈtritɪŋ ju ?)
- If you mean, how about it? In a rather informal way, the expression will be: What’s cracking?, (wʌtsˈkrækɪŋ?) usually said by people of a similar age, this expression would replace the traditional “what’s up? (wʌts ʌp ?), would also be the same as saying What’s good? (wʌts gʊd?) or What’s happening?, (wʌts ˈhæpənɪŋ ?)
If you meet a person you haven’t seen for a long time and you trust, these will be the correct ways to greet.
- How have you been?: How’ve you been? (How’veju bɪn?)
- Simply say how you are doing: How are you doing? (haʊɑr ju ˈduɪŋ?)
- -How are you? How are you getting on? (haʊɑr ju ˈgɛtɪŋ ɑn?)
- You can also use an exaggerated or ironic tone, this is also used in Spanish: it’s been ages I’ve seen you.( ɪtsbɪn ˈeɪʤəz aɪv sin ju)
- Where have you been during this time? Where have you hidden? (wɛr hæv ju ˈhaɪdɪŋ?) This literally translates “Where have you hidden?”
If you want to have more repertoire in your vocabulary so you can vary, the following ways can help you:
- How is it going? ( haʊ ɪz ɪt ˈgoʊɪŋ?)- this is the informal way of saying hello in British English and you would be saying how are you doing?
- How are you doing? (haʊ ju ˈduɪŋ? )- this is the informal way of greeting in American English and you would be saying how are you?
- Alright mate? (ɔlˈraɪt meɪt ?)- an informal greeting from British English, you would be saying something like Mate are you alright?
- G’day: (gʊddeɪ)- this is a semi-informal greeting in Australian English.
- Hello, how are you? (həˈloʊ, haʊɑr ju ?)- translates hello how are you? and is widely used in British English.
There are also colloquial ways of greeting that occur between people who are on the street, they are a simple greeting
Hi! (haɪ ): hello
How things? (haʊ θɪŋz ? ): what’s up?
Haven’t seen you for donkey’s years! (ˈhævənt sin ju fɔr ˈdɑŋkiz jɪrz ! ) we haven’t seen each other for thousands of years!
In the English language there is no distinction between tú and usted, in Spanish we would use this to express ourselves in a more formal or informal way, but in English this will be connoted according to the word, phrase, or phrases used.
How are you in other languages
Next, in an informative way, we show how to say how are you in other languages; Let’s keep in mind that it is one of the most important phrases to start a conversation in any language, so why don’t you learn them and have them in your vocabulary, you can start by uncritizing a friend through one of these.
French: Comment ça va
German: Wie geht es dir
Catalan: How are you?
Galician; How are you
Italian: Come on
Bosnian: Kako ste
Portuguese: como vai
Cambodian: Kumusta ka
Czech: Jak kill yourself
Chichewa: Muli bwanji
Course: Cumu yes
Croatian: Kako ste
Danish: Hvordan har du det
Slovak: Ako sa máte
Slovenian: Kako ste
Estonian: Kuidas läheb
Finnish: Mitä kuuluu
Greek: Τι κάνετε;
Dutch: Hoe gaat het
Hungarian: Hogy vagy
Indonesian: Apa kabar
Irish: Cén chaoi a bhfuil tú
Icelandic Hvernig ert þú:
Lithuanian: Kaip jaučiatės
Malay: Apa khabar
Maltese: kif inti
Polish: Jak się masz
Norwegian: Hvordan har du det
Romanian: Cum vă simțiți
Swedish: Hur mår du