Qué tan vs Cuán

Qué tan vs Cuán
 

People,

Here is an old confusion of mine that I was just reminded of while perusing through Youtube.

"How ..."

How hard is it? How long is it?

I have found ways around it, so to speak. For "How far is it to the ...?" I say something like "Cuál es la distancia hasta la proxima gasolinera?

And sometimes I use "cuan" to say something like: "!Cuan difícil es!á". But this structure seems to be poetic and a bit formal.

But Spanish has a parallel to thiis English sture using "how" by saying somethiink like what \I saw in Youtube this morninng. I saw something like this: "?Qué tan fuerte es el poderío militar Venizolano?".

Is "Qué tan ..." a nice way of structuring a question"?

I ask because I have hardly ever heard it before, but I have run across it now and then.

But I never really used it because I never heard it very often, due to the lack of frequency. I say this although in English, a structure with "how" would be my first resort.

Silopanna/Dean

Although I am not a native Spanish speaker, qué tan is the logical of proposing the question. How else can you gracefully frame the question? Cuál es la fuerza de sounds more awkward to me. ¿Qué tal la fuerza militaria? ¿Fuerte? seems like stretching it to me.