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Lesson Transcript

Hi, everyone! I'm Felice Angelini.
Ciao a tutti, sono Felice Angelini.
Welcome to another Italian Whiteboard Lesson!
In this lesson, you'll learn how to talk about well-being in Italian.
Let's get started!
Questions like "How are you?" or "How are you doing?" are very common in English, either as a greeting or during small talk. In Italian, people ask these questions as well, but typically, you'll hear these questions when two people haven't seen each other for a while or when they're genuinely concerned about the well-being of the other person.
For example, imagine two neighbors run into each other in an apartment lobby, and they haven't seen each other for months.
Let's hear what the two might say.
A: Come stai?
B: Sto bene, grazie.
Well, in this informal situation, we find, in the question, stai is "are you."
And in the answer, sto means "I am"; bene means "well," and then you say grazie, "thank you," to be kind.
All right. So, on the other side of the board here, I listed a few other ways you can answer the question, Come stai?
Let's take a look together.
Sto abbastanza bene, grazie. "I'm pretty good, thank you."
Sto benissimo, grazie. "I'm great, thank you."
Sto molto bene, grazie. "I'm very well, thank you."
abbastanza bene, "pretty good"
benissimo, "great"
molto bene, "very well"
But, finally, if you're not feeling good, you can say:
Non sto molto bene. "I'm not very well."
This answer has a different structure. Note how you need to put non in front of the verb. Also, if you don't want to sound harsh, it's better to add molto.
Okay, now, let's read these responses one more time. Feel free to read after me.
Sto abbastanza bene, grazie.
Sto benissimo, grazie.
Sto molto bene, grazie.
Non sto molto bene.
Good job! Okay.
I listed all the well-being phrases here, in order, from positive to negative.
benissimo -> molto bene -> bene -> abbastanza bene -> non molto bene
non molto bene
And note, benissimo is the same as molto bene.
All of these, except for one, have the same structure:
Sto [CONDITION], grazie.
"I'm [CONDITION], thank you."
Remember that if you want to say that you're not so good, the phrase has a slightly different structure - Non sto molto bene.
Well, you can shorten the pattern by just stating your current state, without any additional words:
Abbastanza bene.
Benissimo.
Molto bene.
Non molto bene.
Ciao ciao "sto," ciao ciao "grazie."
Ciao ciao "sto," ciao ciao "grazie."
Ciao ciao ciao ciao "sto."
Okay?
But in formal situation, I suggest you say grazie at the end of the answer.

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