How to interpret the "As much as" in "As much as I like her, I can't agree with her on this."

Question

How to interpret the As much as in "As much as I like her, I can't agree with her on this."

Does it convery a meaning of concession or comparison?

In other words, does the sentence mean the extent I disagree is equal to that of "I like her" or "As much as" is interchangeable with "Although"?

How could I discriminate the "as much as" in the sentence above from that in "I like her as much as she likes me"?

Answer 1

No, it isn't a comparison.

The first as isn't really necessary, though that version seems to be common nowadays. I would say Much as I like her..., meaning Even though I like her a lot...

Answer 2

OP asks "...how can I discriminate?" if the statement is taken as a comparative, not as a concession that although you like her a lot, you disagree with her on something.

As much as I like her, I can't agree with her on this.

We are not likely to express the degree of disagreement on a particular subject in terms of the degree of liking for the person we're disagreeing with, as that comparison is an inversion and for that reason is counterintuitive:

I disagree with her on that as much as I like her.

As much as I like her, I disagree with her on that.

if you adore her, you are vehemently opposed to her position on the subject, and if you hate her guts, you are in perfect agreement with her on the matter.

Answer 3

'As much as I like her, I can't agree with her on this' is no form of comparison, particularly not of the extent of their disagreement to that of liking her…

In contrast, yes ‘As much as…’ here is wholly interchangeable with ‘Although…’

Quite separately, discriminating between ‘As much as I like her, I can't agree with her on this’ and ‘I like her as much as she likes me’ sadly seems to rely more on context and knowledge of idiom, on which I stand to be corrected.

Even so, basically ‘…I can't agree with her…’ contains no element of value to be used for comparison. By contrast, ‘as much as she likes me’ consists of nothing but elements of value to be used for comparison.

Further, although ‘I like her as much as she likes me’ seems reasonable as a contrived example, it’s equally unlikely to be found in ordinary English.

Nothing greatly similar to ‘I like her as much as she likes me’ will commonly be heard in English, except where a parent is using degrees of loving to teach a very young child about comparison… and please note, many if not most of those parents would not notice that was what they were doing.

From that perspective, was ‘I like her as much as she likes me’ interesting in and of itself, or can you Post other, equally relevant examples?

Answer 4

Disclaimer

As was pointed out by others, it seems not to be a grammatically correct comparison or it is even rarely used in English. Its origin is therefore maybe a translation into English?

Other sources mention that there is a difference of British English ("Much as...") and American English ("As much as...") applicable here:

• StackExchange on English Language - "As much as" at the beginning of a sentence
• Collin's Dictionary on "As much as"
• If you think AI is reliable, check ludwig.guru as kind of a corpus search on that sentence.
• There were no matches to this sentence structure on Oxford Dictionary Online.

Apparently the example can only be interpreted as being like a comparison. In German for example, you find such sentences more commonly.

There is a learning video on YouTube which exactly explains the interpretation as I do understand it here.

Take the following as help to understand the meaning of the sentence, but not necessarily as confirmation to build such figures of speech, unless you do it deliberately.

Interpretation

Implicitly there are two "measures" being compared (or better: put into a relation):

1. The amount of how much "I like you".
2. The amount of how much of "I like you" is needed to "agree with you".

"[As much as] I like her [, although / but], I can't agree with her on this."

It is expressed, that the amount of "I like you" is not sufficient to also "agree" on the topic in question.

Your assumption to substitute with a simple "although" or "but" is correct. See the square brackets in the quote above.

Here are more rewrites on this sentence:

1. Although I like you, I can't agree with you.
2. I like you, although/but I can't agree with you.
3. As much as I like you, I don't like you enough to agree with you.
4. I really do like you, you know, but I am sorry, I cannot agree with you.

Discrimination to "real comparisons"

I think the best discrimination is that in a real comparison you have two positive expressions on both sides, which also refer to the same "thing" being compared, while in the example given, there is a positive and a negative/negated expression (because you do not agree) and also a "liking" is put in relation to an "agreeing".

Examples:

1. I like her[+] as much as she likes me[+].

   • Expressing a "normal" comparison and equality of the levels.
   • "As much as" could also be "more than" etc.
   • If in reality both dislike/hate each other, this will be a case of an ironic or sarcastic statement.

2. I like her[+] as much as she doesn't like me[-].

   • Expressing an equality (or imbalance rather) of opposite levels, "like" and "dis-like".
   • There is a "flip" (negation) in the comparison.
   • There is some "tragic" or "regretful" connotation to the comparison.
   • This is an analogue case for the initial example with "agreeing" (I like her, but I am not agreeing). In this form it is a figure of speech, mostly used to express something like "pitty", because the levels are not zero but still do not match (they are still not high enough), although it would be nice "if" they matched.

For completeness:

3. I don't like her[-] as much as she does like me[+].

   • See 2. There is an (strong and twisted) aversion expressed in the comparison.

4. I don't like her[-] as much as she doesn't like me[-].

   • Both dislike each other the same.
   • Because both sides of the comparison are negated, this case can also be treated as a "real" comparison of equality, like in 1.
   • There is not much pitty expressed here, but it could be intended, because the negative form might have been used to emphasize something.