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Comment by toomanybeersies | Hacker News Reader

It's just a standard greeting. Personally, I find it weird if people actually tell me how they're going when I ask them.

It's even more peculiar/banal in French, where the conversation goes:

    Salut, ça va?
    Ça va, et toi?
    Ça va.

"Ça va" translates to "it is". So in essence, it's a completely meaningless exchange.

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"Ça va." translates "It's going well", not "it is". Similarly, "Ça va?" translates to "Is it going well?".

It's as meaningless an exchange as most greetings (the only meaning being to actually acknowledge and greet the person), but it does mean something literally, and the exchange is technically more complete than when answering "How are you?" with "Hi".

That being said, you'll see someone answering "Salut, ça va?" with "Salut!" quite frequently as well. I would perhaps consider it slightly more of a misstep than in English, but only marginally so.

The literal translation of “Ça va” is neither “it is” nor “it goes well”, right? The literal translation is “it goes”. “It goes well” would be “ça va bien”, which is also used for both question and answer parts of a slightly longer standard greeting.

This isn’t a big distinction because I agree with both of you about the relative meaninglessness of the content of such a greeting in either language.

As a question it does literally translate to “How’s it going?” and then as a response it’s like “It’s going”, but translating common idioms like this completely literally word-by-word doesn’t really make sense. It’s sort of interesting to think about for the same reason that all idioms are interesting, but it’s not very helpful when it comes to translation.

Am I the only one that answers, "how's it going?" With "it goes."?

Because I definitely do that. I'd expect that to be a common idiom in any language. Somewhat surprised to read this exchange seeming to suggest otherwise.

But the above commenter is saying it doesn't translate 'literally' to that, but rather, that is the equivalent meaning.

The 'literal translation' would be translating word-by-word, which by definition isn't going to work for idioms:

> idiom > > A group of words established by usage > as having a meaning not deducible from > those of the individual words

Oxford Dictionary

I don't disagree with you, and in fact I believe the point of the GP to be exactly this -- these idioms' literal interpretations are a bit nonsensical. I was merely trying to point out that I think you two agree.

Well apparently my French is a bit rusty.

"Ça va" translates literally to "it goes".

So the above exchange would literally translate to:

    Hello, it goes?
    It goes, and you?
    It goes.

I guess it's no more banal than answering "how's it going" with "it's going", which isn't that uncommon for people to say. Answering "how's it going" with "not bad, yourself?" isn't really any better either.

Is read that as: "keeping on?" "Keeping on, and you?"

Seems like you could translate the spirit of that into English pretty reasonably.

"Hey, doing well?" "Doing well, and you?" "Doing well."

It's not meaningless, it's just not informational. It does not convey new information, it carries social bonding instead. If you want to know more about it, read Eric Berne's books, e.g. Games People Play.

I worked/lived in France for some time earlier in my career, you can just use ca va. No real need for salut or the et toi. I had this conversation many mornings in the office. Ca is closer to "it goes" than "it is" in this context. Va being the same as in Spanish.

Ca va?

Ca va ca va. Ca va?

Ca va.

Later, the same day, the exchanges goes:

- Re.

Some people hate "Re".

Absolutely not. In case it's someone you don't know a colleague, you open a communication channel allowing them to switch to a different topic and indicating you are not currently busy or annoyed (in which case you would have added it to the "ca va" - "ca va, mais un peu presse/occupe en ce moment").

If it's someone you know well or who knows you, in the timings of responses and the expression of the face you are able to pick up how they're feeling, if something is going on in their lives or is bothering them.

It's much less scripted than the American "hi, how are you", which can only have one answer and always need to have the same expression.

"It is" is "C'est"

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