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I was wondering if there is a form I can use to express "more than X".

For example, "reading more than 200 pages a day is a challenge". Or maybe something like, "reading as much as 200 pages a day is a challenge", or "I have never read so many pages before".

Alenanno
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Myeong
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  • possible duplicate of [Do 以上 and 以下 include the number preceding them?](http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/1765/do-%e4%bb%a5%e4%b8%8a-and-%e4%bb%a5%e4%b8%8b-include-the-number-preceding-them) – Flaw Jan 15 '12 at 23:10

1 Answers1

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I'd probably write them like:

  • 一日に200ページ以上を読むのは大変だ。
    "Reading more than 200 pages a day is difficult."
    ("200 or more pages a day" but I'm not sure the difference of a single page matters here.)

  • 一日に200ページも読むのは大変だ。
    "Reading as much as 200 pages a day is difficult."

  • これまでこんなページ数を読んだことがなかった。
    "Until now I haven't read such a number of pages."

According to Chocolate's comment, it looks like も is better than ほど for expressing a degree here. According to Edict, the second sense of も is:

2: about (emphasizing an upper limit), as much as, even

You could probably use 難しい／チャレンジ／大チャレンジ etc in place of 大変. 読むことは大変 could also be used instead of 読むのは（が）大変 I think.

I have no idea if these sentences are natural or not so please consider this a temporal answer...

cypher
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    I'd say '一日に２００ページ"も"読むのは大変だ' for the 2nd example –  Jan 16 '12 at 00:49
  • @Chocolate thanks! I made so many mistakes in that sentence >_<. I didn't know `も` could be used that way, is it just that `も` sounds more natural or is `ほど` incorrect in some way? – cypher Jan 16 '12 at 01:13
  • @cyper san, I think 'こんなに' in「今まで'こんな(に)'(+たくさん/多くのetc.)…を…したことはない」(like in your 3rd example sentence) can be replaced with 'これほど'. But 'ほど' in「一日に200ページ'ほど'読むのは…」sounds like 'about.' –  Jan 16 '12 at 08:06
  • Am I the only one who thinks that 一日に200ページ以上読むのは大変だ sounds more natural (correct?) than 一日に200ページ以上**を**読むのは大変だ? I never studied Japanese grammar formally, so I don't know the rules, but I think this is because ページ is a counter, not a noun, i.e. there is an implicit 一日に（本などを）200ページ以上読むのは大変だ。Slightly off topic, sorry... – dainichi Jan 19 '12 at 09:30
  • @dainichi I asked a couple of people, they basically said it was natural with or without `を` (though more common without). They said that with the `を` it was an objective which makes the speaker think it depends on what the reader is reading how difficult it is, and without `を` it's an adverbial usage which focuses on pages in general. – cypher Jan 21 '12 at 21:57