Somehow, I must have missed out on learning phrases of changes in quantity in German, so I need a cheat sheet.
| Trend | Quantity | |
|---|---|---|
| Low | High | |
| Decreasing | nur noch “only…left” |
immer noch “still” |
| Increasing | erst “so far” |
schon “already” |
| Stable/Unknown | nur “only” |
|
(Native German speakers: Please feel free to offer corrections.)
Here’s a sentence pattern for demonstration.
| I | have | only | 100 | left | = | Ich habe | nur noch | 100 | : ˦˨ | I used to have more, but I’m running low. | |
| I | still | have | 100 | = | Ich habe | immer noch | 100 | : ˦˧ | I used to have more, but I’m not running low yet. | ||
| I | have | 100 | so far | = | Ich habe | erst | 100 | : ˩˨ | It’s not much, but it’s more than I had before. | ||
| I | have | 100 | already | = | Ich habe | schon | 100 | : ˩˧ | It’s quite a bit, and it’s more than I had before. | ||
| I | have | only | 100 | = | Ich habe | nur | 100 | : ˩ | It’s not much, but that’s typical. | ||
| I | have | 100 | = | Ich habe | 100 | : | It is what it is. |
It’s interesting to me that the last box is empty. Neither English nor German seems to have a clear phrase pattern to indicate “I have a lot, and that’s typical.”
Learning another language gives you a chance to reflect upon your own. When laid out this way, it does seem weird that the English patterns scatter the modifier words into three different positions in the sentence.
Note: These adverbs also have meanings unrelated to quantity. I’m focusing on the quantity-related meanings.
Finnish has two words "jopa" and "peräti" for "stable high".
Meaning of both words is pretty much the same.
Use in sentence: "Minulla on jopa 100 omenaa."
Machine translation translates that as "up to", but the meaning in Finnish is "I have exactly 100 apples and that's a lot".
To convey "up to 100" you'd add a conditional, such as "voi olla jopa".
But I admit it feels very weird to brag openly, so as a Finnish person I'd never use this word in the first person.
Instead it would be as an expression of jealousy, like "naapurilla on peräti 2 autoa".
I guess English has the slang “whopping”, as in “The neighbor has a whopping three BMWs.” And yes, using it in the first person sounds openly braggy.
How about “immerhin”? The quantity is not particularly high, but still! It signals that some level of satisfaction was reached.
Somewhat unrelated, but I’d say my native Serbian does have a word for the last case: чак (čak).
Остало ми је чак 100. (Ostalo mi je čak 100.) = I even have 100 left.
For the first line I’d rather say “Ich habe nur noch 100 übrig”. “Übrig” being the best match IMHO for “left”.
Also the interpretation of “I have only 100” is also not hinting on being typical.
It’s rather either a reply for someone asking for more than 100 ( I have only 100, too little someone asked for),
or from a comparison (I have only 100, but he has 102!)
“I have a lot, and that’s typical.”
I think the English word for that is “abundant” so you would write “abundance of”.
Neither “I have an abundance of 100” nor “I have abundantly 100” nor “I have 100 abundant” sounds idiomatic to me.
“A whole hundred” works, but as you noted, it’s mostly for round numbers. Interestingly, German has a similar formulation: “Er hat ganze 100 Euro” = “He has a whole 100 euros.”
I feel like “I have a whole hundred” could work. (Not a native speaker.) But it doesn’t work with other numbers.
you probably wouldnt use "immer noch" in that context - but instead either just "noch" (no judging of the quantity - could be low or high alike) or instead make the quantity indefinite - e.g. "noch mehr als 100" ("still more than 100") - aka its so much you dont need to worry about the exact number.
also the increasing row doesnt say much about the quantity itself, more about the change of quantity - e.g. you can say "ich habe schon einen" ("i have one already") - where one is not a lot per se, but its alot for...
There is “wenigstens” and “mindestens”: “Ich habe wenigstens 100.” == “I have at least 100.”
Isn’t that stable/unknown high?