>>>>>>>>BTW, in the UK we call them "Blind Dogs". It may sound a bit strange to you but, otoh, what the heck else is an eye for but for seeing
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>What do you call dogs that can't see?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>You don't, but they still come.
>>>>>
>>>>>Hmmm... That's the answer to 'How do you call dogs that can't see'.
>>>>
>>>>Ah, two things here. First, the lack of word for "what" instead of "what" in English, the first one asking for an adjective ("what door is this" - "a green one"), the latter one for definition ("what do we have here?", "a door"). I've seen this so many times...
>>>
>>>For the first, we would say "Which door is this?". The second case, yes, we would use 'what'.
>>>
>>>>
>>>>The second is that, in most Slavic languages, Hungarian, German, Italian (and who knows how many others), the question is not "what do they call you", it's "how do they call you", or even "how's your name", never a what.
>>>
>>>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' ?"
>
>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?".

Too true. Especially when I switch on my Vodafone and the message "How are you?" appears. It's not in the least interested in how I slipped on the hill, on wet chalk, and, being surrounded by nettles, blackberry bushes, prickles, thistles, etc, (it's a jungle out there!) was not able to put out my arms to break my fall and thus landed full on my sacro-coccyx and was left crying in agony and thinking I'd need to be air-lifted off the hill, and ... See, now your eyes are glazing over :-)