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Is it possible to ask "What weather is it today?" instead "What's the weather like?"

Eddie Kal
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Tymiya
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  • https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/174118/what-is-the-weather-today-or-how-is-the-weather-today – Alex_ander Mar 04 '20 at 13:45
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    Does this answer your question? "What is the weather today?" or "How is the weather today?" – FumbleFingers Mar 04 '20 at 13:48
  • 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? – FumbleFingers Mar 04 '20 at 13:53
  • I meant , can we ask 'What weather is it today?' . Is it right, if we speak about the structure of a sentence and grammar. – Tymiya Mar 04 '20 at 13:55
  • 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!* – FumbleFingers Mar 04 '20 at 14:02
  • I bet you have understood very few of the comments under your question. Too bad a simple answer was not good enough. – Lambie Mar 04 '21 at 16:44

1 Answers1

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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.

Lambie
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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. – Jelila Mar 05 '21 at 00:04
  • @Jelila It does not matter for 1. [subject] can be "the weather" or "the weather forecast". – Lambie Mar 05 '21 at 14:53