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I've searched for a while now but haven't really found anything that answers my question.
I would like to know where ほど and くらい come from and how they got to mean such different things.
I know that ほど is 程, which means "extent", and recently I found out that くらい is 位 so it means "rank". But I can't find a book or a site or anything that talks about them.
Does anyone have any information?
The modern reading hodo is a shift from older hoto.
Speculation: This element might be the same hoto that appears as a compounding element in various verbs, apparently related to the adverb potopoto "drippingly", in reference to liquids. These verbs include:
/b/ ↔ /m/ alternation with suffix -mu, "to become like, to appear like". The hoto element could again be interpreted as "lots of water", in the context of "having" or "full of".If 程【ほど】 derives from the same hoto, it might be a reference to "an amount (of something)".
Originally a compound of 座【くら】 ("seat") + 居【ゐ】 ("being, sitting", the 連用形【れんようけい】 or continuative form of verb 居る【ゐる】 "to be or sit in a place").
The initial sense was "where one sits", used then as a euphemism for one's social standing. (For that matter, the English term "standing" is a similar kind of usage.) Over time, this sense of "rank" was extended to refer to various other things.
My personal sense for the subtleties of word usage is limited as a non-native speaker. My gut feeling is that 程【ほど】 is used in places where English would have "as much (or some other adjective) as" or "so much (or some other adjective) that", as in:
That said, 位【くらい】 is also used the same way as the last pattern: 「どれ[く]{●}[ら]{●}[い]{●}食べた？」. In fact, 位【くらい】 seems to be more common than 程【ほど】 in this usage. However, 位【くらい】 is never used for the [ADJ]ければ[ADJ]ほど construction, and for the first pattern, it requires a の where 程【ほど】 just comes right after the noun.
I'll leave a qualitative analysis of the different uses to other posters.
I think they come from the noun form of the words.
People have needs to modify their saying, for example:
She was so happy that she felt like crying.
Weren't there the usage "so...that", this sentence would be lacking a little expressiveness.
Accordingly, 彼女は泣きたいくらい嬉しい。/ 彼女は嬉しくて泣きたいくらいだ。
By the way, I think くらい means position as well.
