have you eaten? > how are you?
like, i don't know how i am but i do know if i've eaten
like, i don't know how i am but i do know if i've eaten
lol i remember reading an argument that 'the Chinese' greet each other with 'have you eaten yet' because of the frequent famines in China, and asking if you've eaten was supposed to be a sign of concern in the context of persistent scarcity...
...which is more or less like saying that 'how are you?' emerged as a greeting under modernity, where depression and anxiety are widespread and we have thus developed a lingua-culture of concern...
...also special mention to Robert Ekvall, who argued that the Amdo greeting 'ཁྱོད་བདེ་མོ་ཡིན་ན' (~you good?) should be translated as 'are you at peaceness' and was a response to the perpetual state of war that Amdo nomads live in.
... this was in support of his argument that Amdo nomads should be recruited to serve American interests against the communists, so all rhetorical and analytical guns blazing I guess.
'are you at peaceness' smdh - my students in Xining laughed at that for days and days
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