qualis

Qualis, quale, third declension, two terminations and an i-stem: ablative singular quali, neuter plural qualia. It works as an interrogative, "of what kind?", and as a relative, "such as", and its answering word is talis, "of such a kind". The pair runs parallel to quantus and tantus for size, which is the cleanest way to hold it: qualis pater, talis filius.

The trap is confusing the three questions. Qualis asks about kind, quantus about amount, quot about number, and qualis never means "how many". As a relative in this corpus it often reduces to a plain "as" introducing a comparison. Cicero coined qualitas from it to render the Greek poiotes, and English quality, qualify and qualitative all descend from that coinage.