German language cheat sheet: On changing quantities

Raymond Chen

Somehow, I must have missed out on learning phrases of changes in quantity in German, so I need a cheat sheet.

Trend	Quantity
Trend	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.

Topics

Non-Computer

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

13 comments

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Clockwork-Muse July 7, 2025

Japanese (and possibly some of the other east-asian languages) has a giant table of counter words – there are different words for different categories of things.

Depending on how you look at it it’s better or worse than the plural forms in English…
Nikolas Gloy July 4, 2025

For that last box (stable/a lot) in German, you could say “ich habe satte 100” or possibly “ich habe reichliche 100”, both meaning “I have 100 and that’s a lot”
Petteri Aimonen July 4, 2025

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".

Read more
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”.

Read less
- Raymond Chen Author July 4, 2025 · Edited
  
  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.
Reinhard Weiß July 4, 2025 · Edited

How about “immerhin”? The quantity is not particularly high, but still! It signals that some level of satisfaction was reached.