If someone asks you: “how are you?” in Italian, do you know how to reply? 

If not, keep on reading and you’ll learn the 5 most popular answers to this question! 

HOW TO ANSWER “HOW ARE YOU?” IN ITALIAN

In Italian, you can ask “How are you?” in different ways and we cover it in details in this lesson. 

But here we’d like to focus on how to reply.

So, of course you’ll have several options, depending on your mood, but let’s see for now the most popular answers.

# 1 – BENE

If you are asked “COME STAI?”/”COME VA?” and you are FINE, then the best way to answer is “BENE” (/ˈbɛne/).

If you feel extremely good, you can also say “MOLTO BENE”/”BENISSIMO”.

# 2 – NON C’E’ MALE

In case you feel that is not going particularly good but it’s not bad either, you should say “NON C’E’ MALE” (/non ˈtʃɛ ˈmale/). This has the same meaning as NOT TOO BAD in English.

# 3 – NON POSSO LAMENTARMI

Very similar to the previous one, “NON POSSO LAMENTARMI”  /non ˈpɔsso lamenˈtarmi:/ means CAN’T COMPLAIN.

# 4 – INSOMMA

If you feel like you are just a little bit down, then you can answer “INSOMMA” that means SO SO. 

# 5 – MALE

If you are not well, you can say “MALE” (/ˈmale/) that means BAD or if it is really a bad day, you can also say “MALISSIMO”.

However, be ready as this answer will lead 100% of the time to another question: “why?”, that in Italian is “PERCHE’?”

CONCLUSION

In this lesson, you’ve learnt the most popular ways to answer “How are you?” in Italian.

So let’s go through them again.

If someone asks you “COME STAI?/COME VA?” in Italian, you can answer with one of the below options: 

1. BENE that means that you are FINE
2. NON C’E’ MALE that is the same as NOT TOO BAD
3. NON POSSO LAMENTARMI meaning CAN’T COMPLAIN
4. INSOMMA that is SO SO 
5. MALE if you are feeling BAD

   Now it’s you turn to answer: “Come stai?” … let us know in the comment below 🙂