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Hello,

I am looking (hoping) for confirmation that the following (#1) is correct for comparing and indicating that the population of China is more than that of India:

#1) "The population of China is more than the population of India."

I understand that possibly a better way to say it would be:

#2) "China is more populous than India."

In the context of teaching comparatives and superlatives as is usually introduced early in elementary level texts, #2 is clearly closer to form than #1.

However, a student asked me if #1 was correct and I said "yes" (gulp). My question is, are they both correct? Is #1 as correct as #2? Is there anything wrong with #1 (syntactically, grammatically, semantically) ?

I'm certain I have heard people make this comparison in spoken English (#1) but maybe it's just me.

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

AjarnB

Surprised nobody has chimed in. Perhaps over thinking this... but really just looking for any objections to #1 above. The student, having just learned comparatives and superlatives, was questioning the construction of #1 because it doesn't have an obvious adjective (the actual population numbers are the adjectives I would reckon). Whereas in #2 we have 'populous' as our adjective and more recognizable form of comparison for this student.

Thanks for any thoughts

AjarnB

Hey man,
#1 is understandable and it contains no grammatical problem but here is the point. In a natural and productive speaking we should always teach the students to seek for the economy of language.
I stead of saying:
The height of mountain A is more than the height of mountain B,
we make it more economic and straight to the point and say:
Mountain A is higher than Mountain B.

Situations like this most of the times happen due to inter-language. Students use the structure of their mother tongue to produce sentences English. So while ensuring your student that he hasn't made a mistake in production of language, you can motivate him to stick to #2 because it's a more natural way of speaking.

Cheers.

Thanks Clayton! Makes good sense!

Cheers