James Tauber

journeyman of some

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A Lot Many People Talk Like This

I work with a number of people from Maharashtra and I've noticed they all say "a lot many" where I would say "a lot of". I wonder if this is based on a similar construction in Marathi or Hindi or if there's some other reason (analogy with "a good many", for example).

A Google search for "a lot many" (with quotes) shows numerous examples (if you ignore the cases where punctuation separates "a lot" and "many" — I wish you could tell Google not to count those cases).

Anyone have any insight?

UPDATE: I sat down with one of my colleagues and I understand now. In some dialects of Marathi (especially around Pune, for example), the "proper" way to express a large quantity is not just khup but khup sare (खुप सारे). In some regions in Maharashtra, it might be fine to just say khup but the use of both words together is preferred by those that consider the Pune dialect (and those similar) the more "pure". A literal translation to English would thus be something like "a lot many".

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Comments (3)

anirudh on Aug. 17, 2007:


it has got something to do with the equivalent expression in marathi

Harish Mallipeddi on Aug. 18, 2007:

A lot of mistakes Indians make generally while talking in English have something to do with their mother tongue because when we are speaking in English what our brains are actually doing internally is to translate the sentences in our mother tongue into English. This doesn't happen just to English. You should see a South-Indian guy speaking in Hindi :)

Neerav on Aug. 20, 2007:

Your Marathi colleauge is right. However this applies to Marathis from other areas like Kolhapur too.
Created: Aug. 17, 2007
Last Modified: Aug. 17, 2007
Author: jtauber