>>>Yep. I never got over the fact that in French, one doesn't ask "How are you?", but instead, "How do you go?" , or, I suppose, "How are you going?", to which we, in English, would answer, "By bus."
>>
>>But "How do you do?" or, as Joey Tribianni would say, "How *you* doin' ?"

In my street here it's "how ya doin".

>BTW. Have you ever noticed that when someone asks how you are, they don't really want to know? Next time someone asks, "How are you?" Start telling them about your bad knees, bad back and how your children or your neighbours are starting to behave suspiciously etc. You can tell by the look on their faces, they didn't really want to hear it. They want to hear. "Fine. You?".

Teatar ITD ("ETC Theatre") of Zagreb has once put together a Ionescque (how's that for Ionescuian? :) play consisting of 90 minutes of answers to this question, with just three actors on an empty stage. They'd have an occasional chair here and there. At some point, Željko Vukmirica (the one of the three whose name I remember) was repeating "and you?" in all possible tones and accents, gesticulating a lot, approaching the audience, and ending it with a "...what? Don't tell me you never heard the Red Riding Hood?". Which then, in retrospect, was exactly what he was telling, using only these two words.