Posted by pakguru on December 6th, 2017 | 0 comments | compare contrast, grammar, Indo English, se, signals, word order
These days gadgets do not consume power as much as they used to.
This should read:
Actually there are three grammar issues we need to consider here:
Before we examine these separately, here is a text to illustrate all three:
Life is so unfair. My friend can eat and drink as much as he likes and not get fat. He eats as many Big Macs as I eat. He drinks as much beer as I drink. However, he does not have as large a stomach as I have!
You have seen phrases like as much as, as far as, as long as, as fast as, etc. These phrases are used when far, long, fast behave as adverbs:
When far, long, fast, etc. behave as adjectives, then you need to change the word order:
Notice that when you’re focusing on nouns, your only options are much (for uncountable nouns) and many (for plural countable nouns)!
Indonesians need to be careful here because in Bahasa Indonesia the uncountable noun is positioned before ‘as much as’, for example “Kalau anjing anda keracunan, kasih dia air kelapa sebanyak mungkin!”
This can be difficult to translate into English if your first language does not have countable and uncountable nouns.
Notice the singular countable noun always has the article ‘a‘! Notice also that you are no longer restricted to many and much. Any adjective can be used!
Again, Indonesians need to be careful because in Bahasa Indonesia the singular count noun is positioned before ‘as much as‘, for example “Nanti kalau saya punya uang saya mau bikin rumah sebesar mungkin!”
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