[Grammar] than (what) we have today

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sitifan

Senior Member
Joined
Dec 30, 2006
Member Type
Retired English Teacher
Native Language
Chinese
Home Country
Taiwan
Current Location
Taiwan
1. It will require much more advanced artificial intelligence algorithms and much larger lexical and semantic databases than what we have today.
(quoted from the link https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Google-Translate-support-voice-for-Hebrew-Language )
2. It will require much more advanced artificial intelligence algorithms and much larger lexical and semantic databases than we have today. (written by me)

Which of the above sentences is acceptable to native speakers?
 
Last edited:
Both are acceptable.

Also '... than the ones we have today' and '... than those we have today'.
 
3. They sent more vegetables than I had ordered.
4. They sent more paper than what I had ordered.

The above sentences are quoted from Practical English Usage. According to Michael Swan, #3 is correct, but #4 is non-standard. Do native speakers agree with what he teaches?
 
I agree with Swan. Sentence 1 in post 1 really grates on me. I don't like that use of "what". When I was a child, it would have been marked as an error. If I'd used it in speech, my parents would have jumped on it in a heartbeat.
The same goes for sentence 4 in post 3.
 
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