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Half as much money as total national income was wagered in the country's betting shops .

Money Half as much as national income was wagered in the country's betting shops .

I couldn't understand if there is any difference between two sentence . If I say two sentence to same person Would that person understand the same ? when we think that the first sentence is ;

Money (that is) half as much as national income was wagered in the country's betting shops .

I thought both has same meaning.

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  • The first sentence needs additional punctuation. Stern has started to say 'a big chunk of money' and then decided to specify how big, so 'as much as $50bn' is an afterthought. As it's direct speech, you could just separate it with dashes, or possibly put it in brackets. "A big chunk of the money - as much as $50bn - is public money." Your second sentence doesn't make sense. Dec 30, 2019 at 8:45
  • @Foreign Student - You have edited your question enormously. Kate Bunting's comment applies to your original question! Dec 30, 2019 at 12:06
  • I know but I couldn’t explain what I want to ask exactly. This is why I had to change my examples. Dec 30, 2019 at 12:13
  • OK. You'd better apologize to her though :-) Dec 30, 2019 at 13:15
  • Of course. I am really sorry for this . I didn't mean I didn’t like her answer. Her anser was correct but I couldn’t express myself very well with my examples. Dec 30, 2019 at 13:35

1 Answer 1

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The meanings are the same IF you can understand them! Your first sentence --

Half as much money as total national income was wagered in the country's betting shops

-- is the most successful, but it doesn't tell us whose national income. If we add that information --

Half as much money as the country's total national income was wagered in its betting shops

-- the reader has to wait a long time for the first verb (was wagered).

Your second sentence, as I think you suspect, shouldn't begin 'Money Half'! As KB suggested, dashes or brackets might help, but again we need to know whose national income. So:

Money - half as much as its national income - was wagered in the country's betting shops.

or

Money - half as much as the country's national income - was wagered in its betting shops.

Those are quite good. And you got rid of the redundant 'total'.

These would be more concise:

Money equalling half the country's national income was wagered in its betting shops.

Or

Money equalling half its national income was wagered in the country's betting shops.

By the way, you could replace "equalling" with "equivalent to", if you wished. And you could spell 'equalling' 'equaling' if your readers were in the US.

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