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- "I am fine, thank you."
"I am fine, thank you."
Translation:Je vais bien, merci.
107 Comments
1996
Hi RobinSeptiplie. I did one language at a time, but now feel it is better to stick to just one language till one gains a reasonable fluency. Wish you all the best for your language studies.
Bien is the adverb well, and adverbs modify verbs. Va is a verb, so you can't say "It is going good" or "I'm good". You have to say "It's going well" or "I am well." Good is an adjective, so if you say "I am good," it implies you're a good person who does good and charitable things like feeding and clothing the homeless and fighting for the oppressed women in Iran. Someone who asks "How are you?" doesn't want to know that, they want to know how you are feeling at the current time.
19
Same here. Not sure why you were downvoted. Ça was even capitalised, which is always the giveaway that it's the first word of the answer
Just curious, I know that merci translates to mean "thank you" in English, but is there a part of the word that specifies that the speaker is thanking "you"?
I'm sorry if my wording confused anyone, but I just came up with this question so don't know how to come up with an accurate query. Thank you in advance for your help and patience!
330
I would say " Ca va bien, merci." or "Merci, ca va bien" any comments from a french person???
In French they usually ask 'Comment ça va?' or 'Ça va?', which can be literally translated as 'How goes it?', which you also hear in English. This might be because in French they have different ways to say 'you' so this is simpler and as such the answer would be 'Ça va bien, merci', which you could translate as 'It goes well, thank you'.
140
it did not give me options for "suis" or "ça va" so apparently "Je vais bien, merci" which I'm pretty sure translates to "I am going to be fine, thanks" but in all fairness i am wrong more often than not
Please read the whole thread about these phrases that don't translate word for word in either way of translation.
"aller bien" is the phrasal verb used to mean "to be (doing) fine" - a matter of health.
"je suis bien" is the word for word translation for "I am fine", but it does not mean that I am doing well, but that I am comfortable - a matter of temperature or body position or other criteria.
So, "I am going to be fine" translates to "je vais aller bien".
This is not a literal translation. 'Ça va bien, merci', which you could translate as 'It goes well, thank you' is closer to a literal translation. In English we have the phrase 'How goes it?', which would be close to the French question that this would be the answer to 'Comment ça va?'. In English we would answer 'I am fine, thank you' but in French they would answer 'Ça va bien, merci', which you literally could translate as 'It goes well, thank you'.
From my experience 'Ça va?' is a shortened version of 'Comment ça va?', which means 'how are you' or a more literal translation would be 'how goes it'. The correct reply would be 'Ça va bien, merci', which you could translate as 'It goes well, thank you'. Most of the time people just ask 'Ça va?' to which you usually just reply 'Ça va bien'. If someone replies 'Ça va' it usually means they are none committal and is sometimes accompanied by a shrug of their shoulders.