Surely this is not “how are you” but “how is IT”. How are you is “hur mår du” ??
In fact, I would say it’s closest to “How are things?”, so as a greeting it’s not far from “How are you?”, either. You can see it as a familiar version of “Hur står det till?”. This is also a way to greet somebody without directly inquiring about the other person’s health.
Greetings don’t always have a straight translation.
Thank you for your response.
I’ve been using Duolingo for some time and find it a little frustrating that some of the text in Clozemaster plays a little fast and loose (with the English translation) as DL will often mangle the English to keep things tight. I don’t mind there being no direct translation (and “how are things” is a MUCH better expression) - but it makes my teeth itch when the English adds in something that isn’t there.
I understand a native’s perspective - but someone learning a language usually expects to see a “du” when a “you” is mentioned, so to speak 
Although I, myself, decided it was slightly nonsensical and nuked that sentence, I thought it looked confusing. Am I being too picky??
You have to bear in mind that Clozemaster gets its corpus from Tatoeba, and sometimes, when there is no direct translation, it will pick up an indirect one, which is probably the case in this instance.
If you are using the browser interface I recommend you to use the “Sentence Source” link whenever you are in doubt.
Thank you - I only realised about the Tatoeba link after posting the above (have seen that you are quite active on there). I do sometimes use the sentence source - but cannot remember how helpful it was with this one as it’s been a couple of days now.
Have since read a blog post that said “hur mår du” should only be used if someone hasn’t been well. And that “hur är det” is “how is it” and that you could also use “hur är det med dig”.
Thanks for your help.
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