Takusan/Ooi; Sukoshi/Sukunai

[morello857844]

Hello,

could somebody please clarify when you use Takusan/Ooi; Sukoshi/Sukunai?
For example:

kono michi ha kuruma ga ooi.

Could I say: kuruma ga takusan? If not, why?

Also, if I wanted to say the opposite of the phrase above, should I say:

1) kuruma ga sukoshi
2) kuruma ga sukunai

Your help is very much appreciated!
Thanks,

Dario

[j_bertoni2279]

"sukoshi" means a small amount, so sukunai seems more reasonable to me. kuruma ga takusan aru seems okay, but I don't know which is more idiomatic.

[sggr4907]

takusan/ippai and ooi work in that sentence. ippai is rather casual tho.

kuruma ga ippai/takusan arimasu/aru.
ippai/takusan kuruma ga arimasu/aru.

and ooi, since you can count cars.

[Psy]

I suppose I'll split hairs and add that ooi is an adjective whereas takusan is an adverb. Thusly:

kuruma ga takusan arimasu (modifying arimasu), and:
kuruma ga ooi [desu] (standing alone), but:
kuruma ga ooku arimasu (also modifying arimasu)

At any rate, they all express the same idea.

[morello857844]

Thanks everybody...it seems clearer now...
Basically takusan/sukoshi need "aru", whereas ooi/sukunai can be followed by desu.

So, please correct me if I'm wrong...we could loosely translate these as:

takusan: a large amount of...
sukoshi: a small amount of...
ooi: many
sukunai: few