> In English, "buy the textbook only if you can afford it" means the same as "affording the textbook is necessary to buy it". That is a tautology; that's true for literally everything: to buy something, you need to afford it.
Is this regional? Where I'm from (UK) "if you can afford it" is commonly used to mean "if you have the disposable income" and they're using the idiom right here, they don't want to turn away people who would be interested but consider ~$80 too expensive for a book.
Is this regional? Where I'm from (UK) "if you can afford it" is commonly used to mean "if you have the disposable income" and they're using the idiom right here, they don't want to turn away people who would be interested but consider ~$80 too expensive for a book.