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".
The original post was in the category: linguistic_observations but I'm still in the process of migrating categories over.
The original post had 3 comments I'm in the process of migrating over.