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In Cantonese, what does 多到 (do1 dou3) mean in this context?

你可以想像罪案多到幾咁嚴重嘞!

nei5 ho2-ji5 soeng2-zoeng6 zeoi6-on3 do1 dou3 gei2-gam3 jim4-zung6 laak3!

My guess is that the sentence translates to something like this:

You can imagine the criminal cases — many became quite serious!

But I'm really not sure. This is the first time I've come across this pattern.

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    多到數唔晒 = Ample amount (So many that I can't even count them all.) Jun 15, 2012 at 16:40
  • "想像" here is more like "guess"/"conjecture" than "imagine".
    – Henry HO
    Sep 3, 2015 at 14:32

2 Answers 2

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You can understand it as "so many that...":

You can imagine the criminal cases are so many that the situation is serious.

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    This is correct. It says that the number of cases are 多 (many) 到 (to the extent that) it's getting serious.
    – jogloran
    Mar 21, 2012 at 8:08
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"多到幾咁嚴重" is sometimes simply a verbal form of "嚴重地多"

In such context, you can translate the sentence as:

You can conjecture that the number of criminal cases is seriously high.

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