?Como te va?

In the email introducing the lesson of the verb ir, it gives the subject sentence for: How's it going? Literally, I'm guessing it means: How go you? So, how come it's not either: ?Como se va? or Como te vas? (Sorry about the missing accents on Como. I forgot how to do that.)

[quo]*Quote from * liamg In the email introducing the lesson of the verb ir, it gives the subject sentence for: How's it going? Literally, I'm guessing it means: How go you? So, how come it's not either: ?Como se va? or Como te vas? (Sorry about the missing accents on Como. I forgot how to do that.)[/quo] Hola y bienvenido al foro. ¿Cómo te va? does mean "How's it going?" It's best not to think of it as "How go you" but rather "How goes it for you?" or "How's it going for you?" In other words, "it" is what goes, and thus you use va, not vas. You could also say ¿Cómo se va? if you were speaking to someone you would address as Usted rather than as tú. I hope this helps. I'll also provide some information about how to type accents, but I'll put it in a separate message to make it easier for other people to find in the future.

[quo]*Quote from * liamg (Sorry about the missing accents on Como. I forgot how to do that.)[/quo] There are a number of different approaches you can use. On a PC, holding down the ALT key and typing certain 4 digit numbers will give you all the Spanish characters without having to change your keyboard. That's what I do. ALT+0243 gives you ó, ALT+0233 = é, ALT+0241=ñ, ALT+0191=¿ , etc. You can find a lot more info here: *__http://www.starr.net/is/type/altnum.htm__* As you might imagine, this topic has come up a number of times in the past. About a year ago, Mauricio sent a message in which he said the following: *"I have tried a few methods, but I found the ALT + 4 method has become as second nature to me and it seems to work almost in every program I'm using..." * I feel the same way Mauricio does. After a while, what seemed a bit cumbersome at first became second nature for me. I use ALT + 4 all the time, even in Internet cafés when I travel. I should add, however, that on a laptop, it's sometimes a bit of a hassle to switch to a numeric keypad, which you need in order to use the ALT+ 4 method. It can be done, but on my laptop I prefer to use a free software program called *AllChars*. It can be found at *__http://allchars.zwolnet.com/introduction.html__*. It works quite well. For example, to type é using AllChars, all you have to do is hit the CTL key and then 'e, either together or sequentially. To type ¿, you hit the CTL key and then ??. It's even easier than ALT+ 4. I didn't switch to AllChars on my desktop mostly because I can use ALT+ 4 on any computer, not just on a computer that has AllChars installed. However, AllChars is easy and it's free. If you don't like it, you can just remove it.

Actually, I'm on a Mac, so I took a minute to look it up (back in the 80's, I used to remember this stuff). Anyway, to type an accent, you type Option-e first then the accented letter. To type the tilde, you type Option-n then the n. To type the upside down question mark, you press Shift-Option-? all at once. For the upside down exclamation opoit, it's Option-1. Let's see if it all gets through: ¿Cómo te va? ¡Mañana is soon enough for me! Well everything looks good here. How about you? (If not, well let me just say, I see funny characters in stuff posted on-line by PC people all the time.) And, by the way, thanks nohablo for your reply to my question. I thought va might refer to 'it', but the te confused me. I thought it would be ¿Como lo va? or ¿Como lo va para tú? or something like that. Shows you that only using a language for a while gives you a feel for the grammer.

Hi guys, Getting back to the original questions.. I think Nohablo is right, but I would like to point out that ¿Cómo te va? is an expression used between friends and that if you are in a more formal situation where you need the use of "usted" you should stick to the more formal ¿Cómo esta usted?... I don't think "¿Cómo se va? is correct (in Chile anyway), but I may be wrong. Adios Mauricio.