# 3 times more expensive



## hadronic

Hello, would you say that all following 6 ways are correct? Which ones sound more natural to you 
פי 3 יקר 
פי 3 יותר יקר 
פי 3 יקר יותר 
יקר פי 3
יותר יקר פי 3 
יקר יותר פי 3 

Maybe some are more natural in free standing position, other when a ממה שחשבתי or מאשר שאר המדינות type of sentence follows. Please say so if that's the case. 

Thank you!


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## DieHigh

I'm not sure about grammatical correctness, but basically all the ones with "יותר" are used by native speakers. פי 3 יותר יקר and פי 3 יקר יותר can stand alone (as long as it makes sense in the context) and before ממה שחשבתי, מאשר etc. יותר יקר is preferred.

העגבניות במכולת של יוסי עולות 5 שקלים לקילו, ובמכולת של שמעון הן פי שלוש יותר יקרות.
זה פי שלוש יותר יקר ממה שחשבתי.

יותר יקר פי 3 sounds awkward to me, and although it may be used by some people (as Google shows) I would advise you not to say it. יקר יותר פי can be used in sentences like: למה הכול בארץ יקר יותר פי 3?

Finally, I would say that you should stick with פי 3 יותר יקר.


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## arielipi

יקר פי שלוש גם טוב בעיני.


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## airelibre

On a related note, how about "a third less expensive"? שלישית פחות יקר? פחות יקר כי שלישית?
(Ie 33% off)


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## amikama

airelibre said:


> On a related note, how about "a third less expensive"? שלישית פחות יקר? פחות יקר כי שלישית?
> (Ie 33% off)


First of all, 1/3 is שליש, not שלישית. (Only above 4 you use the ‏-ית suffix for 1/x: חמישית, שישית, שביעית...)

פחות יקר פי שליש sounds awkward to me. Also שליש פחות יקר (unless maybe if what you want to say is X - 1/3, not X * 1/3. I'm not sure about that).

Not sure פי X works when X is a fraction. In any case, I would just take the opposite of the adjective and say *זול *פי שלושה.


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## airelibre

amikama said:


> First of all, 1/3 is שליש, not שלישית. (Only above 4 you use the ‏-ית suffix for 1/x: חמישית, שישית, שביעית...)
> 
> פחות יקר פי שליש sounds awkward to me. Also שליש פחות יקר (unless maybe if what you want to say is X - 1/3, not X * 1/3. I'm not sure about that).
> 
> Not sure פי X works when X is a fraction. In any case, I would just take the opposite of the adjective and say *זול *פי שלושה.


Thanks


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## hadronic

Yes, airelibre meant X - 1/3, not X/3.
So are we ok with שליש פחות יקר? 

I googled of 6 possibilities above, they all appear except that the ones with יותר positioned after the adjective are much less present. So I'll stick with פי 3 יותר יקר   

On a side note, do you say pi shalosh or pi sholosha ? until amikama's post, I was saying pi shalosh...


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## amikama

hadronic said:


> Yes, airelibre meant X - 1/3, not X/3.
> So are we ok with שליש פחות יקר?


Only for X - 1/3, yes.



> On a side note, do you say pi shalosh or pi sholosha ? until amikama's post, I was saying pi shalosh...


פי שלושה is the correct one (according to the Academia), but פי שלוש is common in colloquial Hebrew. Some consider it as a mistake, some don't...


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## berndf

DieHigh said:


> פי 3 יותר יקרFinally, I would say that you should stick with פי 3 יותר יקר.





arielipi said:


> יקר פי שלוש גם טוב בעיני.


Do this things mean the same? In English (as well as other European languages) there is a debate what "three times more" actually means. Some say it means the same as "three times as much". Others (and this is also my intuitive understanding) think these expressions have a different meaning:
_A costs $5, B is three times as expensive_ = B costs $15 (3 x $5)
_A costs $5, B is three times more expensive_ = B costs $20 ($5 plus 3 x $5 more)

Is there the same ambiguity in Hebrew?


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## amikama

No. פי 3 and פי 3 יותר both mean "multiply by 3" and that's it (no addition). 
In your examples: B costs $15, not $20, for both cases.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> Do this things mean the same? In English (as well as other European languages) there is a debate what "three times more" actually means. Some say it means the same as "three times as much". Others (and this is also my intuitive understanding) think these expressions have a different meaning:
> _A costs $5, B is three times as expensive_ = B costs $15 (3 x $5)
> _A costs $5, B is three times more expensive_ = B costs $20 ($5 plus 3 x $5 more)
> 
> Is there the same ambiguity in Hebrew?



No, there is no such thing in English. "Three times more" means exactly the same as "three times as". Perhaps you are referring to the statistical language of "a 300% increase in price".


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## berndf

Drink said:


> No, there is no such thing in English. "Three times more" means exactly the same as "three times as". Perhaps you are referring to the statistical language of "a 300% increase in price".


I was as sure as you are that my interpretation is the only possible one in my own language.... until we had a thread on the topic in the German forum.

Google a bit and you will find (e.g. here) that there is quite a bit of confusion about this in English as well.


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## hadronic

"Three times more" cannot be 400%, for two reasons:
- nobody would say "one time more people" to say "twice as many"
- "three times less" is not 100-300 = -200%, but 33.33%  (in other words, one third).


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## Drink

berndf said:


> I was as sure as you are that my interpretation is the only possible one in my own language.... until we had a thread on the topic in the German forum.
> 
> Google a bit and you will find (e.g. here) that there is quite a bit of confusion about this in English as well.



It seems to me that all the confusion is caused by anti-social statisticians coming back out into the real world and being confused by how real humans speak (in English at least, I cannot speak for German or French).


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## berndf

hadronic said:


> - nobody would say "one time more people" to say "twice as many"


Exactly, that proves my point. Common intuition ends at one, two, many. Any number higher than that needs mathematical reasoning and that can go wrong. Like nobody would say it's two days until tomorrow but many people argue that Sunday to Sunday is 8 rather than 7 days without recognising the inconsistency. In IT these kinds of mistakes are called off-one-errors, one of the most frequent programming errors and happens even to very competent programmers as integer arithmetics is beyond common intuition.


hadronic said:


> - "three times less" is not 100-300 = -200%, but 33.33%  (in other words, one third).


No, that is "one third less" not "three times less". "Three times less" is nonsense.


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## hadronic

"One third less" is 66% of the original number , like in "one third less expensive".
"Three times less" is 33% of the original number, like in "there are three times fewer people here".


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## Drink

berndf said:


> No, that is "one third less" not "three times less". "Three times less" is nonsense.



"Three times less" than $15 is $5.

"A third less" would probably have to resort to the statistical definition and would mean $10. But people don't really say "a third less" in everyday speech.


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## hadronic

So funnily,  "one third less" is actually "1-1/3", but "three times less" is not "1-3".... Well, now I don't know


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## berndf

hadronic said:


> "One third less" is 66% of the original number , like in "one third less expensive".
> "Three times less" is 33% of the original number, like in "there are three times fewer people here".



OK, I misunderstood what you meant by 33%. You didn't mean 33% less but down to 33%. But that isn't "three times less" either but "two thirds less".


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> So funnily,  "one third less" is actually "1-1/3", but "three times less" is not "1-3".... Well, now I don't know



Clearly you do know, because it is the same thing you just said in your previous post.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> But that isn't "three times less" either



Wrong. It is.


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## hadronic

I know I said the same thing, but what I'm saying now is that in the case of "one third less", I have an _additive _meaning : 1 - 1/3, whereas in the case of "three times less", I have a _multiplicative_ meaning : 1 / 3,
With "more" to avoid confusion :  "one third more" is additive = n+ n/3, whereas "three times more" is multiplicative = 3n.
So if some people understand "three times more" in an additivie way ( n + 3n), it's not completely groundless since fractions are behaving this way....


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## berndf

Ok, you understand "three times more/less" meaning "bigger/smaller by a factor of three". That is not unreasonable.

It simply hadn't occured to me before, which may well be a "déformation professionnelle" as Drink suspected but I am for sure not the only one who has it, so there *is* an ambiguity.


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## Drink

berndf said:


> Ok, you understand "three times more/less" meaning "bigger/smaller by a factor of three". That is not unreasonable.



Yes, exactly.


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## berndf

Drink said:


> Yes, exactly.


In itself it might be reasonable but it is still a stupid conventions because it is inconsistent with expressions like "20% more" or "a third more".


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## hadronic

On a second thought, it's not entirely weird. We say "three TIMES more" but "one third more". The word "times" commands a multiplicative meaning, while absence of it commands an additive one. 
So "one third more" = "1.33 times more". 
The opposite is not possible though : "three times more" = ?? "two more"


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## berndf

hadronic said:


> On a second thought, it's not entirely weird. We say "three TIMES more" but "one third more". The word "times" commands a multiplicative meaning, while absence of it commands an additive one.
> So "one third more" = "1.33 times more".


If three times more of 5 is 15, what is then twice (=two times) more than 5? 10.

That would "once more" then mean? Unchanged. And that makes sense?


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## Drink

berndf said:


> If three times more of 5 is 15, what is then twice (=two times) more than 5? 10.
> 
> That would "once more" then mean? Unchanged. And that makes sense?



I see the problem here. "times" has two meanings. One meaning is "one single instance of something", as in: "He did it 15 times and then two times more" = 17 times (unambiguous, and "two times" can be replaced with "twice"). The other meaning is simply an indicator of multiplication ("three times four is twelve"): "It costs two times more than the 15-dollar ones" = 30 dollars (unambiguous, and "two times more" can be replaced with "twice as much", but _not_ with "twice more").

The ambiguity comes in a sentence like "I did it 15 times and he did it two times more than I did", which could go either way. But you can modify the sentence to make it unambiguous:

"I did it 15 times and he did it two more times than I did" = 17 times (unambiguous).
"I did it 15 times and he did it two times as many times as I did" = 30 times (unambiguous).


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## hadronic

Can you actually say "two times more" in the meaning of "two more times"? 
I ate two more apples, and not : I ate two apples more. Afaik.
That "more" in Hebrew (  ) would be עוד or נוסף, and not יותר.


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## Drink

hadronic said:


> Can you actually say "two times more" in the meaning of "two more times"?
> I ate two more apples, and not : I ate two apples more. Afaik.
> That "more" in Hebrew (  ) would be עוד or נוסף, and not יותר.



You can't say "I ate an apple and then I ate two apples more." (except in poetry perhaps), but you CAN say "He ate an apple, but I ate two apples more [than he did]." The "than" clause can be implicit.


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