The words "how" and "like" clash because "How" already implies manner or appearance, making the addition of "like" (which serves a similar function with "what") superfluous.
"What" expects a noun -> "what is he?" "a dog"
"Like" invites a comparison -> "what does he look like?" "he looks like Lassie"
When you combine "how" and "like" it gives native speakers an itch because you're requesting I create a comparison with an adjective.
A good rule of thumb is to phrase the sentence as a question and see if it sounds correct. "What does it look like?" is fine. "How does it look?" is fine. "How does it look like?" does not. In the question "Like how?", "like" is more akin to "I said, like, what do you want me to do?" - I'm no linguist, but they do have a term for that use.
Given Americans' general indifference to perfect grammer, if it "sounds" right they usually don't make a fuss. So they might have learned something new as well.
As a result, U.S. troops began asking other soldiers questions that they felt only Americans would know the answers to in order to flush out the German infiltrators, which included naming state capitals, sports and trivia questions related to the U.S., etc. This practice resulted in Brigadier General Bruce C. Clarke being held at gunpoint for some time after he incorrectly said the Chicago Cubs were in the American League[7][8][9][10] and a captain spending a week in detention after he was caught wearing German boots. General Omar Bradley was repeatedly stopped in his staff car by checkpoint guards who seemed to enjoy asking him such questions. The Skorzeny commando paranoia also contributed to numerous instances of mistaken identity. All over the Ardennes, U.S. soldiers attempted to persuade suspicious U.S. military policemen that they were genuine GIs.
This is how it actually works. The brain machine learns from available data and sorts out which is correct. "Sounds right" is the output from that neural network. The "rules" are then derived from what some set of people think sounds right.
Some examples that have become normalized for me personally, I think due to working with lots of international folks in tech:
- “i have a doubt” instead of “i have a question”
- “i will not claim X” instead of “i would not claim X” or “i don’t claim X”
- “this is not as X as compared with Y” instead of “this is not as X as Y” or “this is not X compared with Y”
- "it will anyways be fun" instead of "anyways, it will be fun"
I’m not sure if these are broad patterns, or just peculiarities of the specific crowd i hang with. And I don’t think these are standard usages yet, but I’ve become familiar enough that I say these sometimes, despite intuitively feeling that they are wrong.
Edit: i think most of the phrases i have adopted are from Indian English, but unsure.
For example
// this doesn't work because of LanguageService bug, see #123
// this doesn't work because of a LanguageService bug, see #123English will certainly continue to evolve, and eventually it may be dropped altogether. But for example, you couldn’t understand English as it was spoken in the 1400s. It is different enough that we have a separate name for it, “Middle English”. Many of the changes languages undergo are influenced by interacting with other languages. There’s no reason to believe English will stop now.
As to why English will probably keep evolving instead of being totally dropped — it is now the lingua franca for most of the world. It would be unlikely to “just drop” the most useful language 90% of people know.
But you're going too far in the other direction. Like... language nihilism. It's OK to care. Language is deeply, unavoidably personal. Look at how people describe the feeling they get when they read "how __ like": "Itch". It's not only an academic opinion - it's also a piece of who we are.
Then again, my brain tries to complete the sentence as "Atomic Test-and-Set".
Are you purposely trying to drive people crazy?
"How the Atomic Tests Looked from Los Angeles"
or
"What the Atomic Tests Looked Like from Los Angeles"
just don't mash them together like this.