Discussions
Back to Discussions

as....as was not a problem

BurghardtDuBois
Hey native speakers as I said in the title it was not a problem for me until seeing a weird sentence including 4 as. I'm so confused and can not handle it. The sentence is "Thanks to sophisticated sensors that will all but eliminate collisions, as many as eight times as many cars will be packed onto highways as can currently be accomodated safely." Firstly, I don't have any problem for as adverb as or as adjective as but can we put a sentence into "as...as", like the example? Secondly, can I write this like "As many as eight times as many cars as can currently be accomodated safely will be packed onto highways" Last but not least: I could not understand which "as" attached to other "as" help me make it look easy

8 comments

kittyroux•
“As many as” is not a problem at all, but most native speakers avoid constructions like “as many as eight times as many” because we find them confusing and unpleasant. This is a linguistic principle called “horror aequi”. I think most would change it to either “As many as eight times more” or “Up to eight times as many“. As for how to think about it, “as many as” and “x times as many” are set phrases. They \*can\* be put together like this, we just don’t like it.
j--__•
this sentence is natural and typical for formal reporting. a lot of native speakers process "as many as" as a single unit. it means that what follows is a maximum, and reality could be less, but we're not focusing on that. we want to focus on that maximum -- in this case, so that we're adequately prepared for it.
SnooDonuts6494•
It's a really ugly sentence, so I'd definitely rephrase it. You could replace "as many as" with "up to". That helps. But I'd probably change a few other words too. "Up to eight times more cars than can currently be accomodated safely will be packed onto highways"
JenniferJuniper6•
It’s grammatical, but I kind of hate it.
Welpmart•
First: yes, this is fine. Here it emphasizes the quantity of cars. Second: correct, but seems awkward.
TheLurkingMenace•
"as many as" - An amount equivalent to the following. "eight times as many" - Multiply the following by this many. "as can" - Limited by the following. So, if there can safely be (easy numbers here) 1000 cars currently, this change allows for 8000 cars to be there safely.
BouncingSphinx•
>...as many as eight times as many cars packed onto highways as can be... As many as - up to an amount Eight times as many cars packed onto highways as - eight times more cars packed onto highways than The whole thing could be rewritten to read >...up to eight times more cars packed onto highways than can be... The way you've reordered is not wrong, but it makes it harder to read without it broken up.
Consistent_Study_392•
The correct way to say this would be: ‘Thanks to sophisticated sensors that will all but eliminate collisions, eight times as many cars will be packed onto highways than can currently be accommodated safely.’ <— Even this sentence could be improved somewhat but I didn’t want to change it too much from your original sentence. The ‘as many’ twice is redundant and unnecessary so it was removed.