"What is it like?" vs "How is it to?"

Question

The German language (my mother tongue) does not offer different question words for asking for an adjective and for an adverb. In both cases Wie? is used which literally means How? in English. This raises some difficulties for English question sentences:

Is my assumption right, that for adverbs how is used and for adjectives what is ... like? For example:

For adverbs:

He was eating lunch hurriedly.
How was he eating lunch?

She worked very hard yesterday.
How did she work yesterday?

For adjectives:

Our clothes were wet because it rained cats and dogs.
What were our clothes like?

Our new car drives twice as fast as our old one.
What is the car that drives twice as fast as our old one like?

Could the forms of What is ... like be replaced with forms of How is ..., must they be replaced or would it be wrong to replace them?

Answer 1

A rule of thumb for this is that a "how" question addresses a topic with more specificity than a "what, like" question.

If I just escaped from prison and hitch-hiked a ride out of town, the driver might ask me "What is prison like?", meaning he would like a general description of prison. If he asked me "How was Prison?", then he is interested in my particular experience in the pen.

Generally, I would say using the "how" is the safer approach in most cases when you are asking about something specific. "How were your clothes after it rained? (Soaked!) and How is the new car? (Super-fast!) are both totally acceptable. Using "what.. like" will also get you by in some cases. "What were your clothes like after it rained?" is passable. "What is the new car like?" might invoke a weird or sarcastic response "Like a tiger beetle on wheels". It is still passable, but it might sound funny to certain people.

Another thing to consider is that a "How" question demands a description of the subject.

"What was it like" invites the responder to draw a comparison to something familiar to the asker.

For example "How was India?" and "What was India like?" could possibly (though not necessarily) invite different responses.

The first might be responded to with "beautiful, but very hot and humid", while the second might provoke a more comparative description. "It reminded me of Egypt, but more humid."

I am open to correction, but I hope this helped.

Answer 2

'How' refers to a verb and the y way the verb is performed; 'what' is requesting some more information about a noun.

So you cannot directly replace 'What' with 'How', but you could reword the question:

What were our clothes like? - How are our clothes?

What is the car that drives twice as fast as our old one like? - How is it to drive the car that drives twice as fast as our old one?

Answer 3

We could say "How were they dressed?" or "What were their clothes like?" The word "like" wants a nominal: Their clothes were like what?

But I should add that in non-standard colloquial speech you will sometimes hear reply-phrases such as:

They were dressed like how?

instead of

They were dressed how?

where the final word "how" expresses incredulity or amazement or some other kind of emotional response.