A question

Jijia   Tue Jul 19, 2005 3:34 pm GMT
I have many friends whom I recognized from the internet, and thus, can I call the "net friends"?
And if I want to ask my friend about his or her look (appearance), can I put it like this: "how do you look like" or "what is your look(appearance)"?

Could you please help me to put the two sentences in a polite way?

Many thanks from Jijia.
Gjones2   Tue Jul 19, 2005 4:25 pm GMT
Jijia, some persons are a bit sensitive about being asked about their appearance. If you ask in a polite way, though, I see nothing wrong with it. If they don't want to describe themselves, they can always say so (or lie about it :-).

"How do you look like?" -- the use of 'how' there isn't idiomatic. "What do you look like?" would be correct in informal English but a little blunt (unless you've already been conversing a good bit about other things). A longer but more polite version would be "I'm curious about what you look like. Do you mind saying?" Or "Do you mind describing yourself?" (I usually write posts rather than spend time in chatrooms, so I'm not used to thinking up these questions. Somebody else may have some better versions.)

I suppose that "What is your look?" would be correct if you mean which particular style you prefer (clothing style, hair style -- that sort of thing), but I don't believe it's usually used for a general description.
eito(jpn)   Mon Oct 31, 2005 7:28 pm GMT
Hi, Jijia! I'd like to ask you. Were you going to meet someone by appointment? Someone you had never met before? And you thought you needed to know how he or she would look. Am I correct?
abde   Mon Oct 31, 2005 10:46 pm GMT
and can we say : how is the weather?, insead of saying what's the weather like?