Answering a question "how is your back pain?" [closed]

Question

"It is there" was my answer.What is the mistake in it?Please explain.

Answer 1

It really depends on who's asking and why.

• If your doctor is asking, then you need to give a lot more specific detail: location, intensity, type of pain, etc.. As much as you can provide.
• If your friend is asking to be polite, the polite thing for you to say is, "It's fine," or, "It's okay," even if neither of those are really true. Depending on the situation, you can also say things like, "I need to go to the doctor," or make a self-deprecating, but non-committal, remark about how you're getting older and falling apart. They're making small-talk, they don't actually want you to get detailed.
• If your friend is really concerned about you, then you can answer as with the small-talk friend above if you don't want to talk about it. If you do want to talk about it, you can be more honest and go into detail.

The problem with saying, "It is there," is that they are asking about how you are doing, and trying to gauge your wellness and show concern, and you're just confirming something they already know. It's kind of like if someone asked, "Is there gas in your car?" and you answer, "There is gas in my car." Sure, it might be true and technically answer the question, but it's practically useless; a quarter gallon of gas is a lot different than a full tank. What they're really looking to know is how much gas is in the car, and if they should be concerned about the amount of gas in the car.

Answer 2

It is there, I guess, is a literal explanation and grammatically correct.

Most native speakers would find this odd however.

It's more common to say "It's fine" or "It's OK".

Or to comment on if it's improving or getting worse.

In that case, "it's better now" or "it's hurts a lot more now" are also acceptable.