How'zagoin? vs. How'sit going?

There's a common salutation we use in America that, when it originated, was actually an important question: How is it going with you?

How's what going exactly? Well, you know ... The Life! How's the life going?

This is an important question. Understanding what someone's mentality is at the moment could give an incredible amount of context, and help you in determining how to proceed with your interaction with this person. If their dog just died, they're going to be acting a little bit differently than if they just got a new job. These are polarizing examples, but you get the point: How someone is feeling at the moment is an important thing to gauge so that we know how to work with them.

But in the combination of the fast-paced life, and the fast-paced way we slur and combine words and sentences, we've come into 2011, with a conjugated word: how'zagoin'. And as time has gone on, this conjugation's function as a salutation has begun to replace its function as a very important question.

So I've been trying something new with mild success. I've broken the conjugation. I say, "how'sit going?" with emphasis on the break and the "ing" on going. Some people chuckle at how the question sounds with the space and the new emphasis. Some people simply continue on as though I had posed the question as the rhetorical salutation with which they're so familiar, in which case I pose the question again.

But for the most part, folks hear the space between the words and know that I'm deliberate in the way I pose the question. They know that I really want to know how the life is going with them. And for the most part, they respond honestly.

The people who are in a bit of a hurry, will usually respond, "good," or something to that effect, simply because they don't value the interaction enough to actually divulge how the life is going. But some people do. For those that do, there is some extra time invested into the initial interaction, because you have to grasp who you're dealing with and what their mental state is. But that little extra time in the beginning to gauge how the individual is doing is so beneficial to the rest of the interaction. It can save so much time and hassle.