In Hungary, as in much of Eastern Europe

[RonPurewal]

sure thing

[rihanna.hayat]

a quick question:

Correct sentence:
In Hungary, as in much of Eastern Europe, an overwhelming proportion of women work, many of them in middle management and light industry.

How about:
In Hungary, as in much of Eastern Europe, an overwhelming proportion of women work, many in middle management and light industry.

Can 'many' alone refer to working women?

Thanks

[RonPurewal]

a quick question:

Correct sentence:
In Hungary, as in much of Eastern Europe, an overwhelming proportion of women work, many of them in middle management and light industry.

How about:
In Hungary, as in much of Eastern Europe, an overwhelming proportion of women work, many in middle management and light industry.

Can 'many' alone refer to working women?

Thanks

as an editor i don't like that version, but it doesn't seem wrong.

[HanzZ]

choice (a) should be an easy elimination. you can never use "which" modifiers to refer to human beings. this principle has zero exceptions.

--

"an overwhelming proportion of ..." is a quantity expression. most such expressions, although the words themselves are singular, take grammatically plural forms because they represent quantities that are clearly plural in number.
for instance, percentages, proportions, fractions, and the like fall into this category.
one-third of all the students are chinese --> correct. it'd be ridiculous to write "one-third of all the students is chinese".
on the other hand.
one out of three students is chinese --> also correct. in this case, you're literally saying one student (out of three), so, there you go, singular.

there are also other miscellaneous quantity words that are ostensibly singular but are used in the plural, such as "a dozen", "a trio", and so on. same deal.

in fact, "a lot" is probably the single most common quantity word in (somewhat less formal) writing, and that follows the same prescription: a lot of people were there. you would not, by any stretch of the imagination, write a lot of people was there.

--

Hello Ron,

Even if 'many of which' could work, it seems that the expression refers to 'proportion' rather than 'women', namely, many of proportion. Is this correct?

Thanks!

[RonPurewal]

If "many of which" is used correctly, it should work like "which" -- meaning that it has to follow a noun.

In other words, XXXXX work(s), which ... would always be wrong.
If you tried to put "many of which" (or "many of whom") in this context, it'd be wrong for the same reason.

[HanzZ]

If "many of which" is used correctly, it should work like "which" -- meaning that it has to follow a noun.

In other words, XXXXX work(s), which ... would always be wrong.
If you tried to put "many of which" (or "many of whom") in this context, it'd be wrong for the same reason.

---
Hello Ron,

Thanks a lot. Furthermore, could you please take a look at two examples and my questions will be within them:

-An overwhelming proportion of local birds, which are protected, is ('is' or 'are'?) flying south. So here which refers to birds;

however,

-An overwhelming proportion of local birds, which increased significantly comparing to last year, is flying south. I meant to use 'which' to describe 'proportion' here, not sure whether it works this way.

So in general, if what comes before 'which' is a propositional phrase like the one above, do we depend on the context to determine what 'which' describes?

Thanks again!

[RonPurewal]

An overwhelming proportion of local birds, which are protected, is ('is' or 'are'?) flying south. So here which refers to birds

You'd want "are".

If you have
A number of...
An overwhelming proportion of...
Half of...
20% of...
etc.
... then these take the same singular/plural as the thing they're a part of.
E.g., because "birds" is plural, "an overwhelming proportion of birds..." is also plural.
"The student body" is singular, so "an overwhelming proportion of the student body" is also singular.
Etc.

[RonPurewal]

An overwhelming proportion of local birds, which increased significantly comparing to last year, is flying south. I meant to use 'which' to describe 'proportion' here, not sure whether it works this way.

You can't do that; you'd have to say the proportion.

In general, if you want to refer to the mathematical figure itself -- rather than to the birds, or the students, or whatever -- then you have to say THE percentage, or THE number, or so on.

You would also have to include a qualifier to state exactly what percentage/proportion/etc you're actually talking about, because otherwise the phrase is meaningless.
E.g., the overwhelming proportion of local birds doesn't mean anything. (Which proportion of birds?) You'd have to write something like the overwhelming proportion of local birds that migrate south for the winter is still increasing.

[ligong.liu]

Sorry for that I still have a question here.

In Hungary, as in much of Eastern Europe, an overwhelming proportion of women work, many of which are in middle management and light industry.

Why here uses as 'much' of Eastern Europe? I think the words means "as in many other countries of Eastern Europe". We can count one/two... country, right? What I misunderstand here? Thank you!

[RonPurewal]

Sorry for that I still have a question here.

In Hungary, as in much of Eastern Europe, an overwhelming proportion of women work, many of which are in middle management and light industry.

Why here uses as 'much' of Eastern Europe? I think the words means "as in many other countries of Eastern Europe". We can count one/two... country, right? What I misunderstand here? Thank you!

Here, "Eastern Europe" refers to that entire geographic area as a single entity. It's like saying "the area of Eastern Europe".
In much of [the area of] Eastern Europe, ...

If it doesn't say "countries", then it's not talking about countries.

[NarenS469]

Hello Instructors,

I eliminated B,D,E based on below structure:

In X , as in Y .......

- Only A & C has the similar comparison structure.

Is this the right way to eliminate?

Thank you,

Naren

[RonPurewal]

that is valid, yes.

[NarenS469]

Thank You sir!

[RonPurewal]

Thank You sir!

you're welcome.

[VikrantS137]

hmmn.... could someone please help me understand why "as in much..." is the correct way to start this part of the sentence...

i felt that "like much of..." would be the right way to go... but i'm clearly missing something

if you open a sentence with "like X, ..." then the following two things must be true:
1 * X is a noun (or something else that can function as a noun, such as a gerund, noun-type phrase, etc). in other words, X should not be a clause
2 * you INTEND a COMPARISON between X and the SUBJECT of the following sentence.

if these 2 things are not true, you can't use "like".

in choice (e), the second of these is not true, because the SUBJECT is not "hungary". the subject is "an overwhelming proportion of women". that's not a sensible comparison.

.

I thought comparision was between "In Hungary" and "as in much of Eastern Europ" and not between "Hungary" and "an overwhelming proportion of women". Please share thoughts.