"Le français est parlé couramment par ________ 200 millions de personnes dans le monde."

Question

French language is spoken by more than 200 million people around the world.

I put "plus que" since that felt like "more than" but the correct answer is "plus de." I'm struggling to understand this since it doesn't fit the same structure as the lesson examples (e.g. French is spoken by more people than Italian).

Thanks for any clarification!

Maarten Kamp · Answer

Elysia,

this is a statement of ‘ superiority’ applying to the quantity of ‘ the number (of people speaking French) ‘.

It can be confusing that it translates into common English usage as ‘ more than ‘ in this structure, but that’s just the way it is.

The French expression to be used in a simple number/quantity superiority statement applying to nouns is ‘ plus de qqc ‘

Effectively it is the same as the first part of the first comparative statement in the lesson :

‘ j’ai plus de livres ( superiority statement) que toi ( qualifying comparison statement )

I think the lesson could explain this further - as the heading, examples and text don’t fully convey the distinction.

See link below to Laura Lawless site for more discussion and a good final ‘ en résumé )

https://www.lawlessfrench.com/expressions/expressions-of-quantity/