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The best way to illustrate the question is by example.

I now have {twice}/{double}/{two times the} the work to do, in half the time!

Of course, I do not want to limit it to this example, but it is the simplest I could elpensi. In this example, would it then be...

  • ..."duoble {da}/{de la} laboro" and "duone {da}/{de la} tempo"?
  • ..."duoble pli {da}/{de la} laboro" and "duone [mal]pli {da}/{de la} tempo"?
  • ..."duoblon {da}/{de la} laboro" and "duono {da}/{de la} tempo"?
  • ...io alia?

Note that this is not a question about «da» versus «de la», but if contemporary usage dictates that one ought to be favoured over the other in this specific case, do let me know.

1 Answer 1

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There are several options. This is what I thought of and I can find some confirmation in tekstaro. Here are some examples:

  1. -oble tiom …

Link -oble to tiom and then use that to express the quantity or amount (either with da or de, whatever is the case). Then you can use normally comparisons with the tiom, kiom construction. This is the one I found the most and sounds the most natural to me.

se li eĉ havus duoble tiom da legioj, duoble tiom da urboj kaj maroj kaj landoj kaj nacioj?

—Quo Vadis

ili certe komandos duoble tiom da homoj, kiom la romanoj

—La Ŝtona Urbo

  1. -oble [tiom] kiom …

I found only one entry for -oble kiom, but this is essentially case 1. with tiom left implicit.

vi lin faras filo de Gehena, duoble kiom vi mem

—Nova Testamento

  1. -oble da …

No tiom or kiom in this case.

ili kolektis duoble da pano, po du omeroj por ĉiu

—Malnova Testamento

Pro la akvo la arboj havas duoble da sunlumo

—Kontakto 2011-2019

intertempe la minejo produktis tridekoble da tunoj da erco ol antaŭ duonjarcento

—Artikoloj el Monato 2012-2018

  1. -oblo de …

I found many results for oblo(j)(n) de, which is also a natural way to say this. In fact, when I just went back to your original sentence, I would use this one in this case. This is less useful if you want to directly compare it to something (as with tiom, kiom). Here are some examples from Tekstaro again.

Laŭ normala logiko la kampulo diris almenaŭ la duoblon de tiu sumo

—Koko krias jam!

li certe havas almenaŭ la duoblon de mia aĝo

—La Ŝtona Urbo

do la duoblo de la antaŭmilita prezo

—Le Monde diplomatique en Esperanto 2011-2013


Note that the above list is not exhaustive.


In your specific example I would say:

Mi nun devas fari duoblon de la laboro en duono de la tempo.

(Since we refer to a specific work (the work that has been assigned) in a specific timeframe, it postulates that we use de for both cases. It is not a quantity of a general thing (like work or time in general), but it is part of the work and the time.)



As Juha Metsäkallas pointed out, another possibility is duobla laboro. This tends to have the more specific nuance of the same work being done twice, rather than simply twice the amount of work (which includes the possibility of the same work twice). Here is an example:

[UEA] havas la tre malfacilan taskon servi kaj al tiuj membroj kiuj retumas kaj al tiuj, kiuj ne povas aŭ ne volas uzi reton. Bedaŭrinde, la reta epoko ne signifas radikalan plisimpligon de ĉio, sed ofte duoblan laboron. Eble nur por transira fazo, eble por longa tempo.

—La Ondo de Esperanto

In this case this specifically means that essentially the same work has to be done twice—once for online members and once for offline members.

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  • I very much esteem the completeness of this answer, thank you! May 20, 2020 at 21:14
  • Thank you :). I'm glad it helped! (Ironically, I explicitly mentioned that my list was not complete haha.) May 21, 2020 at 7:59
  • Can't you just simply say …duoblan laboron? Perhaps not sufficiently but I found two new such usages in Tekstaro. May 21, 2020 at 14:19
  • @JuhaMetsäkallas I think I would interpret duoblan laboron as basically doing the same thing twice, rather than doing twice as much work. May 21, 2020 at 22:23
  • @Joffysloffy, wouldn't doing twice be something like dufoje? I googled a little and found "por eviti duoblan laboron" by Emilio Cid (UEA) and "vere kreas duoblan laboron" by Thomas Pusch (admin of Vikipedio). May 22, 2020 at 6:18

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