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I am not a native English speaker, and I'm always confused by people saying or writing

"How it feels like"

It doesn't sound right to me, and I am always trying to correct it to

"What it feels like"

Is it correct to say "How it feels like", or should it be "What it feels like"?

A two-part image titled "MATH CLASS". Over the top image, captioned "How It Looks Like" is a standard classroom with a teacher using an overhead projector in front of various students at their desks. The bottom image is captioned "How It Feels Like" with a picture from the video game Call of Duty: Black Ops, subtitled with a quote from Jason Hudson from the game: "The Numbers Mason, What Do They Mean?"

tchrist
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oɔɯǝɹ
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  • You would benefit from reading the discussion at this link http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/150325/how-do-we-call-something-in-english Choosing between how and what is the same, in both questions. – Tristan r Jun 17 '14 at 18:56
  • Why the downvotes? – oɔɯǝɹ Jun 17 '14 at 19:13
  • I don't know. I didn't downvote it. – Tristan r Jun 17 '14 at 19:17
  • The only thing I can think is that your question title had nothing to do with the question, or really with anything at all. That still shouldn't cause this piling-on, so I'm as puzzled as you are. (In any case, I just fixed the title.) – Marthaª Jun 17 '14 at 19:19
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    Hmm... It looks fine to me as a question. @oɔɯǝɹ, I am a Native speaker. What it looks like and what it feels like are the correct questions in your example. Yet, How it looks and How it feels are ok without the like. – anongoodnurse Jun 17 '14 at 19:40
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    I don't much like "Tell me how it feels like". It just comes across to me as an illiterate mashup of "Tell me how it feels" and "Tell me what it feels like". – FumbleFingers Jun 17 '14 at 20:04

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This is a kind of syntactic portmanteau, where two intentions compete for utterance, and the contest is so even that both wind up equally and simultaneously realized—as delightfully explained and illustrated in the Preface to Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. Here, instead of “Richard” plus “William” colliding so as to produce “Rilchiam,” “How it feels” and “What it feels like” collide to produce “How it feels like.” In formal writing this type of thing is thoroughly normal and commonplace in drafts but should preferably be caught in revision, and one of the two different syntaxes chosen and realized consistently.

Brian Donovan
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