"I am fine, thank you."
Translation:Ça va, merci.
72 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
"Je suis bien, merci" would be the answer to a question like "Es-tu bien assis ?" (Are you well seated?) or "As-tu assez chaud ?" (Are you warm enough?)
In other words, "Je suis bien" means "I am comfortable", not "my health is good".
Ca va, merci. Is that answer okay?( sorry, i can't type the correct Ca...)
If you hold down the letter, when typing, you should see a little pop-up window other choices for the letter. Just slide your finger to highlight your choice.
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You have not put in "merci", which means "thank you". If you put "ça va bien, merci", this should be accepted.
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On my laptop the special letters with the accents on them are shown under the box you write in, so you just need to click on the one you want. Okay they are not shown here but you can always cut and paste if someone else has used it in on the page like this "Ça va, merci."
How are we supposed to know that in the second "chapter" (for lack of a better word)?
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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.
Hi! Do you know which level you get when you finish a duolingo course, please? Thank you
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You can reach up to B2 level when you finish all lessons on level 5 - depending on the course. You still need to use the language in the "real world" though
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When I wrote "Ça va bien, merci" it marked me correct, so maybe you wrote something incorrect or missed out the "merci". "Ça va bien, merci" is in actual fact a better translation of "I am well, thank you" as "bien" means "well".
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.
Exactly. This is one of those cases in which learning French also teaches English grammar! For instance, I never learned the correct use of "whom" in English, despite years of primary schooling, until I took French.
asked my husband (raised in France) the same thing. I assumed bien was used how "well" is used in English. (He used to get on me for saying sleep good when it should be sleep well haha). He said the only time you would really say bon is when someone is perhaps asking you if you're hungry or cold and you would say "oh, it's/I'm fine." "c'est/ ca bon" or with food, saying the food is good.
I got a word bank and while the answer I put was accepted (ça va bien, merci), the "correct" answer was "je vais bien, merci." neither "je" nor "vais" were words in the bank.
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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!
"merci" does not tell who you are thanking.
You have to add the preposition "à" (= to) + a stressed pronoun to personalize your thanks:
- merci à toi, merci à lui, merci à elle, merci à vous, merci à eux, merci à elles
I also thought that would work but I learned "Je suis d'accord" means "I agree" rather than "I am fine".
No, because "I am fine" by itself just means that you are in good health.
Like my prof says, "don't think in English when trying to answer in French"
Bien was also missing on mine so I took a screenshot to complain and just put Ça va merci (to get to the forum) and it was accepted. So confused now...
One of the possible answers to the question, "Comment ça va?" ir just "Ça va?" (both mean 'how are you'/'how are you doing'; literally 'how is it going') is, "Ça va," (I'm fine; literally 'it is going').
It is akin to an English-speaker asking, "Are you okay?" and another responding, "I'm okay."
So it doesn't need bien unless you want to convey that you are doing better than fine/okay--that you are doing well.
Thank you your comments really help me to understand this question...... Merci
Why is it just, "ça va, merci" instead of, "ça va bien, merci"? Can a native speaker explain?
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I am not a native speaker but I live half the year in a French speaking part of Switzerland. If you think of it more as 'how goes things?' and someone answers 'things go, thanks!'. It is more of a none committal answer that you get from young people nowadays.
Isn't "Je suis bien, merci" the literal translation of the text ? ( It would mean "I am well, thank you" )
So is it not that we have to use "suis" along with "je" always as in "i" always goes with "am"?
Exactly. "Suis" goes with "je" and that's the principle of all conjugations: "Je suis, tu es, il/elle/on est, nous sommes, vous êtes, ils/elles sont."
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However in this case "Ça va, merci" is not a literal translation of "I am fine, thank you". "Ça va, merci" is closer to "It goes, thank you", which might be the answer to the English question "How goes it?". "Ça va bien, merci" would be "It goes well, thank you", which would be closer to "I am fine, thank you". "Ça va, merci" is more of a non committal answer like saying "It goes, thank you", as opposed to "It goes well, thank you". As Sitesurf has shown the verb "to be", so what he has shown translated into English is "I am, you are, he/she/it (he has shown the informal version of we, so c'est would be it is) is, we are, you are, they are". I hope that helps.
Correct ans is "je vais bien, merci' when i wrote this they are saying that it's wrong i would suggest
Correct ans is "je vais bien, merci" when i wrote this so they were saying that it's wrong , that's answer is "ca va, merci" bit it's actuall mean in English is "how are you , merci" so it's offcourse wrong ans so i want to suggest that plz duolingo correct you answer.
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"Comment" means "how" so what you have written "How are you?" or a more literal translation "How goes it / How it goes?". What you have put down is the question to the answer they are looking for.
if it has the word (letter) "I", then "je" is appropriate. je va bien, merci, is correct or why not? id like to learn why this is incorrect.
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First you are on the right track, in that you have worked out that this is an answer to "comment ça va?" which literally means "how goes it?". Now you can answer it by answering "ça va bien, merci", "it go well/fine, thank you" or "je vais bien, merci", "I go well/fine, thank you". Where you went wrong was that you forgot the construction of the verb "aller", "to go", which is a bit of a weird one in French because they used more than one Latin verb to construct it. You can see from the list below that with "je" it should have been "vais" not "va".
Je vais = I go
Tu vas = You go
Il/elle/ça va = He/she/it goes
Nous allons = We go
Vous allez = You go
Ils/elles vont = They go