"Мой брат спрашивает, что в коробке."
Translation:My brother is asking what's in the box.
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I believe просить means "ask for"/"request" whereas спрашивать is simply "ask".
I think I see the source of your confusion, because if someone asks "Where is the box?" you would say "He asks where the box is." Even as a native speaker, I'm not sure I could give you the general rule, but I can explain this specific case.
The question "What is in the box?" is already in standard word order. You could answer "The cat is in the box." But "Where is the box?" has a transposition, because the answer would be "The box is there." Occasionally you will even hear English speakers ask "The box is where?" -- it's a bit of a clumsy word order but still gets the point across.
So in the sentence "He asks where the box is", the original transposition is removed, and replaced with a different one, because we like to put the question word ("what", "where", etc.) right after the verb "asks". We're not moving the verb "is" to the end, we're moving the word "where" to the beginning.
I think this is maybe explaining convenience but should not be a rule. I usually speak like this and thats mainly because people around me have spoken like this.
That sounds rather like he's asking about something called "In the box", or what being in the box is like.
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I am not a native English speaker but I think Yuri is right. Can a native English speaker help us?
I am 7 months too late, but I can assure you that Berniebud was right. The only possible meaning of Yuri's sentence is that someone is asking about something called "in the box".
In other words, it's a nonsensical sentence.
Why is it in perfective form? Aren't perfect verbs reserved for completed actions?
In the tips section of the "Where" skill. It says that you use "в" with places with boundaries or borders, and "на" with open places. and since the box is a "place" with borders / not an open space, then it takes "в".
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"My brother's asking" was wrong because it wanted me to write "my brother is asking" -_- Come on Duolingo...
