Breakdown of Liebe Anna, wie geht es dir?
Anna
Anna
Wie geht es dir
how are you (informal)
lieb
dear, kind
Questions & Answers about Liebe Anna, wie geht es dir?
Why does Liebe have an -e at the end here?
Liebe translates to "Dear" in this context. Because Anna is a female name, the adjective takes the feminine ending -e. If you were writing to a man, you would use the masculine ending -er, such as Lieber Thomas.
Why do we use dir instead of du or dich?
The phrase wie geht es literally translates to "how goes it". In German, you express this condition as "how goes it to you". Therefore, you must use the dative (indirect object) pronoun dir ("to you") rather than the subject pronoun du or the direct object pronoun dich.
Could I just write wie geht's?
Yes, you can! Wie geht's is a very common casual contraction for wie geht es. However, because this sentence looks like the opening of a written letter or a nice email to a friend, it is very standard to write out the full words geht es.
How would this sentence change if I were writing to someone I address formally, like a teacher?
You would need to change both the greeting and the pronoun. Instead of Liebe, you would use Sehr geehrte for a woman or Sehr geehrter for a man. Then, you would swap the informal dir for the formal pronoun Ihnen. For example: Sehr geehrte Frau Müller, wie geht es Ihnen?
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