"La restoracio havas tiom da gastoj."

Translation: The restaurant has so many guests.

[qoppaphi]

In English, "so many" doesn't just mean "some amount", it generally implies "a large amount". Does "tiom" behave similarly? What about the other "ti-" correlatives?

[salivanto]

This is true. The Esperanto sentence literally means "this amount of guests." If we wanted to be more emphatic, we would have to say "tiom multe da gastoj."

[theextroll]

Wouldn't "The restaurant has many guests" also be acceptable?

[salivanto]

No.

• multaj gastoj = many guests
• tiom da gastoj = that many guests.

[blessedwhitney]

Besides rote memorization, anyone have any ideas/tips on how to learn ""so many" (tiom da) is different from "a lot of" (multaj)"

[arbaro]

Tiom is a correlative! The ti- prefix means "that" (like tie = that place, tiu = that person) and the -om suffix means "many" (like kiom - how many), so tiom really means "that many" or "so many".

[Pedro534731]

why is "the restaurant has a lot of guests" wrong?

[TonioVeju]

"Tiom" (so many) is a little different than "multe" (many). Tiom implies a large given quantity (i.e. this many, without explicitly stating a number), whereas multe implies a large, but undefined amount. Vi povas havi tiom da sukero en la taso, aŭ vi povas havi multe sukero en via domo.

en:You can have so much sugar in the cup, or you can have a lot of sugar in your house. There is a fixed amount of sugar that will fit into the cup, but (practically speaking) unless you know the exact quantity there's just "a lot of sugar" in a space as large as a house.

Does that help?

[salivanto]

Vi povas havi tiom da sukero en la taso,

You can have this much sugar in the cup. (Holds up a finger to one of the measuring lines.)

[ChuckBaggett]

Any chance it should accept "The restaurant has so many customers."?

[TonioVeju]

"Customers" in Esperanto is klientinoj, and in this case the exercise is specifically looking for "guests" (gastoj).