"What effect do they have?"

Translation: Che effetto hanno?

[mwest130]

Yes, why is cosa wrong?

[mangoHero1]

The word "What" is used in this sentence as a form of a saying which effect. Which can only be translated as qual or che. :-)

[Anemona11]

I wrote: Qual'effetto hanno. It is wrong. Can you ever replace the e at the end of quale with the " ' "? I thought, since there was an e at the end of the first word and and e at the beginning of the second that you could replace the first e with " ' ".

[f.formica]

Quale has a truncated form "qual" so it's never elided (i.e. no apostrophe); however it's only used in a few selected cases, e.g. qual è, qual era, la qual cosa...

[Anemona11]

An excellent explication. Thank you formica.

[BampaOwl]

I did the same :-(

[01nick1988]

Can anyone explain why this has to be 'che' and not 'cosa'? I thought they were interchangeable

[Wanhm]

Why is qual accepted, not quale?

[LynnSerafi]

Actually, I experienced the opposite. I put "qual" and it wanted "quale".