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Hi avocadohummus, Exactly, look at these examples:
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How many do you have? = Kiom da vi havas?
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How much do you have? = Kiom vi havas?
As you have said previously:
Kiom = how much
Kiom da = how many and Duo accepts how much, too, but I do not know why
I hope to have you helped If there are doubts or mistakes please comment
Greetings and luck
Bye
<h1>A picture for cheering your day up!!</h1>
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"Kiom da akvo vi havas?" should be "how much water do you have?", so "kiom da" isn't always "how many". It doesn't distinguish counting and non counting like we do in English.
The way you translate "kiom da vi havas" is not entirely correct. It would almost be "how much/many of [something] do you have" (see http://bertilow.com/pmeg/gramatiko/rolmontriloj/rolvortetoj/da/nekutimaj_uzoj.html under "Da-ismo"). It isn't "how many" specifically (I think anyway... I'm still learning).
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Hi Chris, I'll ask you this since you seem to have grasped this concept better than I did. In a practical sense, how does "kiom da pagxoj" differ from "kiom pagxoj"?
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Hi Stroovblou, "kiom da pagxoj"?=How many pages?
"kiom pagxo"?=How much page? or How page?, Translated literally, but It does not make sense, as I said previously: Kiom da = how many and Duo accepts "how much" too, but I do not know why, It must be because the course is still in Beta.
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-Remember, Kiom = How much? or how?
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-Kiom da = How many?
I hope to have you helped If there are doubts or mistekas please comment
Greetings and luck
Bye
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So I said "How many pages in the book?" should that be accepted? It's possible that it only works in Australian English though
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That does make sense in English, but there's no verb there so it's not a 'real' sentence, and the Esperanto sentence does say 'estas', so that could be it :/
My brain derped, and for a moment I thought it said "library" not book... now my brain is actually curious XD
The way i'm understanding this is 'kiom' can be either 'how much' or 'how many' depending mostly on context, i'm struggling to see how the 'da' could be of any use and not just clutter?
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The "da" appears to specify the meaning to be "how many", while "Kiom" alone refers to "how much".
Remember that Esperanto is fundamentally an Indo-European language (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_languages) that are characterised among other things by a more or less strict word order, usually subject-verb-object (SVO). English has a very strict word order (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo) and therefore the need for words that denote grammatical case (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnF1ycgelUY) is minimal. In contrast, Esperanto has more relax rules for word order, and therefore one must denote grammatical case in some cases.
In the sentence "Kiom da paĝoj estas en la libro" the word for pages is in the partitive case (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitive_case) that denotes how big part of something. In English that has ,shall we say, an atrophied case system it is sufficient to say "How many pages...". In Esperanto the partitive must be shown and one uses "da" for that.
Slightly off topic: My native language uses separate accusative and partitive cases which remove the need for articles. Therefore I make a lot of mistakes with articles in English as I see them just as clutter.
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No. "Kiom" specifically is just "how much" or "how many" kind of like "cuantas" in Spanish. Think of it like saying "quantify the number of pages" (except as a question) rather than "how many pages" as that's closer to what it really means and the "how" is just because that's how we say it in English. "Kiel" is obviously just "how".
