Talk:how many time

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RFD discussion: November 2018[edit]

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

I think this “entry” shows or says “when someone or something would do something” Or “in what time someone or something would do something” Or “on what number of time someone or something would do something”. I was thinking

Why would they want to delete it? — Osbri (talk) 23:53, 2 November 2018 (ET)

Because you're mistaken. It's not grammatical English. The word many is only used with things that are countable, and how many always takes a plural, so it should be "how many times". Many languages use different words for the equivalent of the countable and uncountable senses of English time, and the countable one is translated as Spanish vez, French fois, German Mal, and Russian раз (raz), while the uncountable sense is translated as Spanish tiempo, French temps, German Zeit, and Russian вре́мя (vrémja). In English the correct term to use with something uncountable is much. One can say how much time or how many times, but never how many time. I don't know what your native language is, but you don't speak English well enough to be creating English entries. In addition, this is all covered by the entries for how many, much, and time, so we don't want entries for how many times or how much time, either. Chuck Entz (talk) 04:50, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Speedily deleted: not grammatical, and sum-of-parts. — SGconlaw (talk) 05:13, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) It is ungrammatical. Either the use of time in this combination of words is countable (sense #3.4), and then it should be how many times, or it is uncountable (sense #2.1), as suggested by the definition and then it should be how much time (as in the sentence “Can you believe how much time we spent on this?”; for more examples, see here). In either case, it is not an adverb; in the example sentence it serves as the object of the verb spent. Whether something should be included here is described in our criteria for inclusion. One requirement is that a proposed entry must be in actual use. Then it must either be a word, or, if it is a combination of words like in this case, it must be an idiomatic expression. Otherwise there would be no end to the number of things to be included, like early breakfast, take a left turn, in a minute or so, and so on and so forth. How do we see that these are not idiomatic expressions? Because you can replace the parts by other parts: late breakfast, early lunch, miss a left turn, take a right turn, since a minute or so, in an hour or so. We call such a non-idiomatic expression “sum of parts”, because its meaning is simply obtained from the meanings of its parts. For comparison, take all hell broke loose. This is a common expression in which the combination is fixed; people do not say things like some hell broke loose, all trouble broke loose or all hell got loose. And to understand the expression, it is not enough that you know the meaning of each word in the expression. Please read the criteria for inclusion carefully; it will save you from the unpleasant experience of working hard to add an entry, only to see it deleted.  --Lambiam 05:17, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think I’m not understanding why you think “how many times” is covered. Where might it be covered?

And I was thinking “how many times” is an adverb when I thought of “phrases” that say “how many times have you done this?” Or “I did this 5 times” — Osbri (talk) 01:59, 3 November 2018 (ET)

How many times is covered by how many + times, in the same way that nice shoes is covered by nice + shoes. You can use “how many times” as an adverbial expression, just like “next week” (“I’ll do it next week”), which does not make ”next week” by itself an adverb, because you can also use it as a noun. Likewise, you can also use “how many times” in other ways (“How many times will be enough?”). Only as an idiomatic expression, like the other day, can it get definite part-of-speech assignments.
I am afraid that Chuck Entz is correct in his assessment above that your command of English is not sufficient for you to be creating English entries.  --Lambiam 06:14, 3 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]


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