I know that “how” often translates to “como”, but this is usually with verbs. “How do you listen to music” becomes “como escutas música”. But what about in cases like “HOW tall is she?” or “I just love HOW beautifully he plays the piano”, or even “I forgot how much tea he drinks”? I’ve seen the word “quão” or however it’s spelled thrown around, once with an “o” thrown in front of it, but there’s no mentioning here about its rules.
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Good question, @Jemmy. Specifically for how much/how many, we use quanto(a), which is covered in this Learning Note: Interrogative Quantifiers: How Much? How Many? | Practice Portuguese It’s used both in questions and in statements. Otherwise, we do use quão before adjectives/adverbs, as you’ve seen. I’ll make a note to complement the Learning Note with this one soon, as I don’t think we have covered it yet.
Unlike quanto, quão is an invariable term and there’s not much in the way of rules, really. It’s true that in statements, it’s become rather normalized for quão to be preceded by the definite article o, becoming the fixed expression “o quão”, but this is in theory not required under European Portuguese grammar standards. Some examples of use:
- Quão alta é a torre? (How tall is the tower?)
- Não sabia [o] quão caro isto era. (I didn’t know how expensive this was)
- Eu sei [o] quão exigentes nós somos. (I know how demanding we are)
- Olha [o] quão bela está a noiva. (Look how beautiful the bride is)
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Understood. I must ask though because it just dawned on me. When using multiple adjectives or adverbs is it advised to use “quão” only once or possibly also as many times as there may be another adjective or adverb. For example, to say “I can’t stand how loud and dissonant this song is”, could it only be as “não consigo tolerar quão alta e dissonante é esta canção” or for possible emphasis could you go further and say “quão alta e quão dissonante é esta canção”.
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It’s enough to use it only once – repeating it is possible, but it’s more redundant than emphatic 