Is it possible to ask "What weather is it today?" instead "What's the weather like?"
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ell.stackexchange.com/questions/174118/…– Alex_anderCommented Mar 4, 2020 at 13:45
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3Does this answer your question? "What is the weather today?" or "How is the weather today?"– FumbleFingersCommented Mar 4, 2020 at 13:48
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What weather is it today? is "syntactically valid", but not idiomatic. On the other hand, you can use the "existential it" construction to ask, for example, What temperature is it today?– FumbleFingersCommented Mar 4, 2020 at 13:53
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I meant , can we ask 'What weather is it today?' . Is it right, if we speak about the structure of a sentence and grammar.– TymiyaCommented Mar 4, 2020 at 13:55
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Like I said, it's "syntactically valid" (it doesn't break any grammatical rules). But in practice, native speakers simply wouldn't normally say it. I can imagine an unusual contrived context where a competent native speaker might deliberately use that "non-standard" form, but for you as a learner, there's really no point in exploring some completely unnatural context that you'll never encounter in real life. For all practical purposes, What weather is it today? is not right - it's wrong!– FumbleFingersCommented Mar 4, 2020 at 14:02
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1 Answer
Let's be clear about what is idiomatic:
What's the weather today? Cloudy with a chance of rain.
What's the weather like today? Cold and snowy.
Both can be used conversationally or when speaking. This is not complicated and is a beginner question, which is fine.
like is now often use here though it is not needed. like is often used in questions where the answer is a description.
- What's he like?
- He's a nice man.
Rule for questions in English with words like what, when, where, how and the verb be
The order is:
What + [is or are] [subject: the weather] today?
What is your name? Same structure.
How is your sister.
Where is your car?
How were your exams this year?
Etc. Etc. Etc.
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In the first example 'the weather' appears to be an abbreviation for 'the weather forecast'. I think that's why the sentence works.– JelilaCommented Mar 5, 2021 at 0:04
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@Jelila It does not matter for 1. [subject] can be "the weather" or "the weather forecast".– LambieCommented Mar 5, 2021 at 14:53