"How are you?" "How's it going?" are phrases that ask others how you are feeling. Learning English as a second language, I have knew what it means and when I was asked, I was used to expressing my true feeling. What I did not know was that anyone uses the phrases simply as a greeting.
When I first moved to Canada, among various different cultural differences I was told that when people say how's it going, it does not mean that they really want to know how you are feeling at that moment. Strangers don't need to know you have been having a bad day or feeling broken hearted from break up. It is a way for people to greet each other and nothing more.
When students learn English, we are told to answer how we feel using pharses like "I'm sleepy", "I'm hungry", " I'm tired" but I had to explain to the students that when you meet some one on a street, they may ask how you are but it does not mean they want to know what you are feeling but it is part of a greeting.
In Japan, it is not common to say how are you to strangers and it certainly is not something we say while sendding e-mail or chatting so my friends giggle when I ask them how they are every time we talk. We often uses how are you on the letter or when you have not met that person for a long time. I often forget that and type it up whenever I want to say hi to someone but I guess it does not work the same way in Japanese.
Do you say how are you to strangers?
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