[laepelba]

I have always been told that ¿Qué tal? means "how are you?" Well, I guess that it is the same sense as "how are you?", but I don't believe that's an accurate translation.

The first part of my question, then, is what exactly does ¿Qué tal? mean? I mean, que means generally "what", and tal means generally "thus" or "such". I don't necessarily get "how are you?" from that. I guess that I'm asking how the sense of the meaning works.

The second part of my question is about the other uses of "¿Qué tal?". I heard something in a podcast recently that you can use it as a more generic beginning of a question to find out how something is. The person talking about it said that it eliminates the need for verb tense. For example, I could say "¿Qué tal tu madre?" for "How is your mother?" and "¿Qué tal la fiesta?" for "How was the party?" (that happened last night). Right??

What other uses for this nifty little phrase exist?