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- "How are you doing?"
"How are you doing?"
Translation:Как дела?
79 Comments
1674
Hi Olimo, can you please confirm this: I understood from another comment (in another lesson) that RUssians do not ask "how are you" in the same sense that other countries do (Americans, Brazilians, etc). If they ask, it is because they really want to know (for example, if someone is sick in a hospital, or something like that...) Then как дела is more appropriate for day-to-day life??!!
165
I think the thing I found confusing in the answer is not the use of "dela" (sorry, no cyrillic keyboard here), but the lack of any word in the russian that means "you" or "your". It seems to me that "kak dela" ought to translate as "how are things" (in general, not necessarily YOUR things). Maybe the asker is interested in business or family, not in you specifically.
165
Understood. But the app asked me to translate "How are you doing?" into Russian, and I am still new enough that I spent some time trying to figure out the correct form of "ty" to use before finally getting it wrong, which seemed unfair to me under the circumstances... :)
89
Yes, it's fairly casual. It would be less appropriate to use it with someone you didn't know. There are plenty of similarity casual variations on it. Even "How's things" "How's tricks" (In Australia) "How's you" (Bad grammar, very informal and a bit cutesy, but common in the UK)
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/how%27s_things https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/how%27s_tricks https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/how-s-you
"Как Дела?" Sounds similiar to the spanish saying of "Como te va?" and sounds more like "Como le va?" too, wich for me, is a more relaxed/casual and less intimate way of asking "how are you." As a native spanish speaker I use "como te va" and "Como le va?" in that way, other native spanish spearkers may use it the other way, wich is totally fine. It can be used as a personal way of asking someone how they are, but "Como te va?" and "Como le va?" what I say all the time when meeting people on the streets. It just depends on the tone.
And "Как ты" can be interpreted as "Como estas tu?"
Idk, that's my way to tell them apart...
1010
"как ты" is accepted as an answer for "How are you", which, in English, means the same thing as "How are you doing". If "как ты" and "как дела" are not equivalent to each other in Russian, than this should be explained in a way other than accepting only one as the Russian translation of one English term, and only the other as the Russian translation of another English term having the same meaning.
384
A little question: What's basically "y"? Although I think the answer won't be that easy...
If there is something similar to that "y" in any other language, please tell me so I can understand it better
Cпасибо!
Я [нахожусь] у брата = I am with my brother at his home
Я [нахожусь] у этого дома (у=возле, около) = I am near that house
У неё нет брата = She doesn't have brother
У нас нет времени = We have no time
У кошки четыре лапы = Cat has four paws
Я уже у цели = I am moving to the goal and it is quite close (near)
I think you may have been going for "как вы делаете?" which would be somewhat grammatically correct, but it would not be the correct translation in this case. The Russian expression for "how are you doing" does not include the literal translation for "doing" (делаете). Instead, the Russian expressions for this include literal meanings like "how are things?" or "how are you?" or "how are your affairs?" and even "how are you living?" In general my impression is that generic verbs, like "doing," are avoided as much as possible in Russian.
1010
You don't need a Russian keyboard - you can tell your keyboard to start acting Russian. Assuming you're using Windows 10, you can do this by going to "Edit language and keyboard options", then "Region & Language", then click the "Add a language" button and select Russian. After you do that (once), you can thereafter switch back and forth between Russian and English (or whatever) via a setting down in your task bar near the clock.
Of course, you also have to know what key corresponds to what Russian letter. I suggest searching the web for an image of a Russian keyboard. Use that image as a reference at first, then gradually try to wean yourself off of it. Took me, I don't know, maybe a couple weeks before I felt more or less confident typing Russian characters without looking at the image of a Russian keyboard.