What's the weather like vs. How's the weather?

[ZukaRashid]

I would like to know if you say "What's the weather like?" or "How's the weather like?". If by chance this is the American and British English versions...

Thank you...

[Mister Micawber]

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Not to my ears; the second merely sounds very casual.
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Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's

[Yankee]

Did you notice the word 'like' in that second sentence, MM?
The second sentence doesn't even sound "casual" to me -- it only sounds wrong.

I'd say either
"What's the weather like?"
- or -
"How's the weather?" (Do not use the word 'like' in this sentence.)

[ZukaRashid]

And you can say "What's the weather like?" when you wanna know what type of climate is there, right?

And "How's the weather?" when you wanna know if it's rainning or sunny, etc, right?

[Yankee]

Well, I would not say that "What's the weather like" would be used exclusively to mean "What sort of climate does that area generally have?" (Was that your question?)

If I were on the telephone with friends in another city, for example, I might say:
"What's the weather like (today)?"
-or-
"What's the weather been like (recently)?"

What you might also hear in conversation is a question like this:
"What's the weather doing?"

[Mister Micawber]

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Yes, I did notice the 'like', Yankee. When I said 'casual', I really meant casual-- I do hear people say it that way sometimes, sometimes jocularly.

I did not even consider 'How's the weather' as part of the question, though-- my bad.
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Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's

[Jamie (K)]

[ZukaRashid]

Thank you so much for the notice!

My primary queu was due to a question that my english teacher made me. She asked me how to say: Como est? o tempo? (I'm portuguese and this is portuguese, lol). I answered: How's the weather?
She said that it was the biggest mistake I could say in english... I even asked other engliah teacher about this question and the said: How's the weather like? It makes sense! But the teacher keeps saying it's What's the weather like?
My doubt comes from there...

[ZukaRashid]

sorry for the mistakes!!!

[Jamie (K)]

[Conchita]

Perhaps the teacher was referring to the difference between the questions:

- How is someone? and

- What is someone like?

The first refers to someone's health, while the second is to ask about someone's looks and/or character.

[Jamie (K)]

Conchita, I think the teacher was just rejecting the sentence "How is the weather?" because it is word for word the same as in Portuguese. She probably thought that if the syntax was too close to Portuguese, it couldn't be right. A lot of teachers have weird ideas of this sort.

[Torsten]

Hi Jamie,

I think what Conchita had in mind is this:

How is your new boss? He is fine, thanks.
What is your new boss like? He is quite demanding but that's OK. I think I'll get along just fine.
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TOEIC Preparation & TOEIC Vocabulary

[Jamie (K)]

I understand that, Torsten, but that kind of thinking is not applied to the weather question. "How is the weather?" and, "What is the weather like?" are understood as the same question, and they elicit the same answer. I still think the teacher had an aversion to any sentence that had the same wording as a Portuguese sentence. I've never had a foreign teacher argue with me about "how..." and "what...like", but countless times I've seen them accuse people of making a mistake when a perfectly good English sentence happened to have the same syntax as its equivalent in their own language.

Example: If you want to fail an English exam at a German high school, try writing an absolutely perfect English sentence like, "Never have I seen such a thing," or, "Rarely have we let anyone do that." The German teacher will think it's Germlish and mark the student down.

[Yankee]