"What does he eat?"
Translation:Cad a itheann sé?
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cad é sin? - "what is that?"
Check out the FGB entry for cad. Cad can be used with an explicit copula (cad is ainm duit?) or an implicit copula, and in some cases it's better understood without a copula at all.
"arguably somewhat idiomatic"???
Sometimes the word following "how" is a verb, sometimes it's an auxiliary verb, sometimes it's an adjective, sometimes it's an adverb.
cad is an interrogative pronoun. It's always a question word that means "what", though it is idiomatically translated as "how" in cad chuige? and "where" in cad as (because English idioms and Irish idioms don't always overlap).
Can you point to some of these "different ways syntactically and structurally" that cad is used that make it so different from "how", in your opinion?
But "how" means the same thing in all of those sentences and is used in the same way. It's always a question word that queries and functions adverbially. There's no real distinction in meaning or function, although the usage in "how are you" and "how many" is arguably somewhat idiomatic. But the meaning is perfectly clear from the ordinary sense of the word "how." (That doesn't mean that "how" can be successfully translated into any other language using the same word for each of those questions, but that in no way indicates that there isn't a real fundamental unity to the sense and usage of the word in English.) By contrast "cad" is apparently used in different ways syntactically and structurally in Irish in different types of questions, which is much more confusing. Of course, English has its own peculiarities and absurdities . . .
"he eats" and "he is eating" don't mean the same thing, they are different tenses, or different aspects of the present tense, if you prefer. itheann sé and tá sé ag ithe don't mean the same thing, for the same reason.
Apparently some other languages don't make the same distinction.