Naaa?

 I'm visiting my friend Lisa right now, and we got on the topic of the German "Na?"

"Na?" (often stretched out into "Naaa?") is a sort of word/sound/interjection, an all-purpose greeting-noise-to-make-when-you-see-a-friend (this applies only to our generation, not to older Germans). It's kind of annoying, actually, because it's a question that has no real answer – all you can really do is respond back with another, "Na?" So the entire exchange goes like this, devoid of any content:

Person A: "Naaa?"
Person B: "Naaa?"

Lisa quite insightfully pointed out, though, that this is just the same as "How are you?" in English – it's (usually) not really a question that you ask because you're looking for an answer, it's just something you say in greeting.

This is a helpful thing to have pointed out, because Germans often complain that Americans are so superficial, they ask you how you are and then they're not even interested in hearing your answer! So next time I hear that complaint, I'll be able to explain it better by comparing it to the German "Naaa?" – it's not a question, but a greeting.

(Heading back downstairs after this conversation, Lisa suggested we test out the theory that "Na?" is only ever answered with another "Na?" So when we arrived in the kitchen, Lisa went "Na?" and her brother immediately looked up from the table and said, "Na?" And of course then we both fell about laughing, while everyone else looked baffled.)

Then her dad started telling me about the typical greeting exchanges people have in the local dialect here, with its syllables-clipped-off economy of speech. They apparently run something like this (roughly translated):

"How're things?"
"Good."
"Wife?"
"Good."
"Car."
"Runs."

Ha! This amuses me, because it's exactly like the exchanges people have in Senegal (and I think a lot of other parts of Africa), where you run through this whole litany of how's the wife, how's the family, how's the job, but it's not about asking for an informational answer (people just want to hear each other confirm that the social order as they know it is still in place, as far as I can tell) and the answer is always, "good, good, good." (Or in Senegal, "ça va, ça va, ça va.")

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Also, Lisa's parents were telling me about a new film, and how they heard a review of it on the radio. The reviewer played a sound clip from the film, then said, "Wie ihr hört, ist das wieder der Ben Kingsley" ("As you can hear, that's Ben Kingsley again").

...But this is hilarious, because of course they were playing the German dubbed version of the movie. (All movies here get dubbed.) So it wasn't Ben Kingsley at all, but the German actor who did his role in the dubbed version. But the thing is, each of the really big-name actors always gets done by the same German voice actor – so there's one guy who's always the voice of Brad Pitt, say. Or someone who's always the voice of Ben Kingsley. And because this is the case, a German listener can actually tell that that's Ben Kingsley – even though in point of fact it's not – because they recognize the voice of the guy who always dubs his roles.