Is it “as much as” or “as little as”?
Sun May 3, 2009, 8:08 am | Leave Comment
English not being my first language – and neither is Math by the way, it’s confusing when someone tells me “Oh! It’s as little as $20. Can you believe how cheap it is?” In other instances, the same person would say “Oh! it’s as much as $8. Can you believe how expensive it is?” Which is actually expensive or cheap depends on what it is you are buying. By the way, there are two kinds of things in life – expensive and less expensive. There is nothing cheap. Something worth a dollar is expensive if you cannot afford it. On the same token, something worth $10 is cheap if you can afford and willing to pay for it.
A few weeks ago, we were visiting a family about half an hour drive in Virginia from the National Mall in Washington D.C. One day, they decided to take us to a fancy restaurant in one of the two malls in Tysons Corner. Our host said they charge as little as $20 for an entree’. It’s so cheap.
On another occasion, we were out driving. It was lunch time so we stopped by a hamburger joint – a national franchise. We all went inside and our host said: “Can you believe they charge you as much as $8 and that’s per person. It’s so expensive.”
Yesterday, I was surfing the Internet – it seems to be a full-time hobby for me. I came across a review about some books. It said: “you can download a chapter of a book for as little as $1.99.”
A week ago, I was doing research for my almost daily posts about banks. At one place on a page, I read if you don’t use the ATM machine your card was issued for, the other bank will charge you as much as $2 for a transaction.
So, in one case, it is as little as $1.99 a chapter – it’s so cheap – and in the second case, as much as $2 for using an ATM that belongs to a stranger – it’s so expensive.
In a Nutshell
Is it our mindset? Is it our perception about things that in one case $20 worth of entree’ seems so cheap and in another, $8 seems so expensive?
What do You think?
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