Please help me translate! 도와주세요~!
뜻이 어떻게되요?

I told the person that the German use of two certain words is use daily and very important, and that it's a bit weird for me as a native German speaker that they don't exist in Korean. His answer was 뜻이 어떻게되요? and I'm a but confused by the meaning of it.

뜻 meaning
어떻게 how
되다 to become

I know all three words, but I can't get the meaning of the sentence as a whole... How to become the meaning? That doesn't sound right nor do I understand what that has to do with hat I wrote.. :/

Please help me!

Question

Please help me translate! 도와주세요~!
뜻이 어떻게되요?

I told the person that the German use of two certain words is use daily and very important, and that it's a bit weird for me as a native German speaker that they don't exist in Korean. His answer was 뜻이 어떻게되요? and I'm a but confused by the meaning of it.
 
뜻 meaning 
어떻게 how
되다 to become

I know all three words, but I can't get the meaning of the sentence as a whole... How to become the meaning? That doesn't sound right nor do I understand what that has to do with hat I wrote.. :/

Please help me!

Answer

"뜻이 어떻게 돼요?" ("돼요" is correct here.  되다 -> 되어요 -> 돼요)

되다 here means "become / turn into / make / come to", etc.

So it is like "How (into what) does the meaning become?" => "What does it mean".

There are some contexts where the English "what" becomes "how"(어떻게) in Korean.

- What do you think?  어떻게 생각하세요? (not 무엇을)  
- What do you make of it?  어떻게 보세요 [생각하세요]?

Answer

It's just another way of saying "무슨 뜻이에요?" or "뜻이 뭐예요?". I agree it's difficult to grasp the meaning of 되다, it means sooo many things. But your friend made a mistake it's 돼요 not 되요.

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