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How to ask "How do you do?" in Latin. Quomodo te habes, is it common?
What other common greetings for the "How are you?" exist?

I have seen:

  • Quomodo es?
  • Quid agis?
  • Quomodo te habes?
Joonas Ilmavirta
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Quidam
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1 Answers1

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I would not use quomodo es. It is a calque of the English phrase and does not strike me as sensible Latin. Of course, if someone finds attestations in reliable sources, I am ready to revert my opinion. Translated another way, quomodo es? is "in what way are you?", and that should give a hint at the unnatural nature of the phrase. Many idioms are unnatural but have become common, but the same turn of phrase is not necessarily sensible in all languages.

If you were to expand the English question "how are you?" to "how are you feeling?", you would get better translations. For example, ut vales? is a good way to ask for health, and it is the classically attested choice. Mind you that I would take that as an actual question, not a mere greeting. Quomodo te habes? and quomodo vales? are essentially synonymous to it but are more recent choices — I am only familiar with them as phrases used in contemporary Latin in Finland, and I claim no classical precedent. If you want to stick to what the Romans would have said, then ut vales? is the way to go.

Quid agis? is a good question, but it's more directly "what are you doing?". I wouldn't use it for "how do you do?" or "how are you?" but "what's up?".

Both ut vales? and quid agis? are classically attested phrases and therefore your best and safest choices. Both are found in the play Persa by Plautus.

Joonas Ilmavirta
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    I think quid agis? is indeed the best match, often used like "what's up?". I would add ut vales? and ut valetur? for the "how are you feeling?" flavour. – Vincenzo Oliva Nov 07 '19 at 11:25
  • @VincenzoOliva Good point! I added ut vales as an option. I chose to leave the passive out for simplicity, and I'm sure I've overlooked something else too. There's always room to go beyond basics, but I think an elementary answer is worthwhile at least as one of the answers. – Joonas Ilmavirta Nov 07 '19 at 13:22
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    I wonder about Valesne? – Tim Lymington Nov 08 '19 at 18:17
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    @TimLymingtonsupportsMonica That sounds more like "Are you ok?" to me, not really a greeting. – Joonas Ilmavirta Nov 08 '19 at 18:38
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    quōmodo valēs doesn't ask for "bene" or "male", but for "dīs juvantibus" or "multā medicīnā" or "meīs vīribus" – Unbrutal_Russian Sep 29 '20 at 16:27
  • @Unbrutal_Russian I think it could ask for any of those. I know of no better way to ask in Latin how someone is doing, but I'd be happy to learn if there is one. – Joonas Ilmavirta Sep 29 '20 at 18:39
  • *ut valēs?* is the basic way to ask this, the other variant seems to be post-breakdown of the Classical system of conjunctions, although it might occur around the Classical period in some subliterary texts, because the two conjunctions were already largely interchangeable by that point. Still, set expressions are better left untouched – Unbrutal_Russian Oct 03 '20 at 04:09
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    @Unbrutal_Russian Thanks! I didn't know that ut vales is indeed the classically attested choice and quomodo vales is a more recent variant. A few quick corpus searches indeed verify that. I updated my answer. – Joonas Ilmavirta Oct 03 '20 at 09:35
  • @Joonas llmavirta: Related to "How do you do?" is "Pleased to meet you." = "mihi placet" (Glosbe), All the other examples of its use include some qualification; though, the meaning in these becomes "it is pleasing to me". On Q:https://latin.stackexchange.com/q/13623/1982, I made the mistake of assuming that "videtur mihi" = "it seems fine to me" can stand alone, without qualification. Vincenzo pointed out it must be followed by an "ut" or "si" clause. Apart from "Pleased to meet you.", can "mihi placet" stand alone, meaning "it (is pleasing or) seems fine to me" in any circumumstances? – tony Oct 13 '20 at 12:28
  • @tony That's best asked as a separate question. Whether mihi placet can stand for "pleased to meet you" is a nuanced matter. Being technically grammatical does not imply being correct or idiomatic. One possibility is to ask how the Romans expressed their pleasure at a new acquaintance. I'd be happy to see that covered on our site! – Joonas Ilmavirta Oct 13 '20 at 13:32
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    @tony I'm 99% positive that "mihi placet" can't be used like that any more than "I like" can in English. The reason it's given as an option on Glosbe is that someone mistranslated it as "encantado/enchanteé", which can be used this way in Portuguese, Spanish and French. Glosbe should not be used as a source or as a learning material. It can be used as a source for some useful suggestions when you can already reliably spot if those are as far off as in this case. – Unbrutal_Russian Oct 14 '20 at 15:14
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    @Unbrutal_Russian You could give that as an answer to Tony's new question. – Joonas Ilmavirta Oct 14 '20 at 16:13
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    Unbrutal_Russian: Welcome back. Long time no see? Thank you. This may explain why "mihi placet" does not appear in isolation; at least, not in my searches. Thanks again. – tony Oct 20 '20 at 12:10
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    May I also draw everyone's attention to Eleanor Dickey's book Learning Latin the Ancient Way: Latin Textbooks from the Ancient World - a real gem! https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/learning-latin-the-ancient-way/069A72E3A677FDAC79DA1B15E85E8889 You can find lots of useful material there, e.g. "-Quid agis? - Omnia recte. Quomodo habes?" – Alex B. Feb 21 '21 at 18:34
  • @AlexB. Thanks! I wasn't aware of this. Now if we can get the same thing in Ancient Greek... – cmw Apr 01 '21 at 01:24