ほど Japanese Grammar Lesson
Grammar Type: Particle
Essential Meaning: To the extent of / To the extent that
Construction:
- Noun + ほど
- E.g. 君ほど [As you / To your extent]
- Demonstrative Pronoun + ほど
- E.g. それほど [To that extent]
- Informal Sentence + ほど
- E.g. 家が倒れるほど [To the extent that the house falls down]
Notes:
- ほど expresses an extent or degree to which something / someone does something or is in some state.
- When ほど is preceded by a noun, the main predicate is generally negative. Such sentences mean “Not as X as Y” or “Someone / Something doesn’t do X to the extent that Y does“.
- E.g. クリスほどよく勉強する学生はいない。[There is no student who studies as well as Chris does.]
- E.g. *私は太郎ほど強い。[I am as strong as Taro is.] This sentence is ungrammatical because ほど is preceded by a noun and the main predicate is positive.
- When ほど is preceded by a demonstrative pronoun or an informal sentence, the main predicate may be positive or negative.
- E.g. この仕事はこどもでもできるほどやさしい。[This job is easy to the extent that a child could do it.]
- E.g. その仕事はそれほどやさしんですか。 [Is that job that easy?]
- E.g. ルイサさんの日本語は太田先生も外国人だと気づかなかったほど上手です。[Louisa is good at Japanese to the extent that even Ota sensei didn’t notice that she is a foreigner.]
- When preceded by a quantifier, ほど can be interpreted to mean “About“.
- E.g. ビールを3本ほど飲みました。[I drank about three bottles of beer.]
- When quantifying objects with a number + counter (e.g. “Two apples“, “Five bottles“), ばかり and くらい be used instead of ほど. One difference to keep in mind is that ほど and ばかり are used to convey exact amounts, while くらい can only be used to express approximate amounts.
- E.g. そのリンゴを二つ(ばかり/ ほど)ください。[I’d like two of those apples, please.] Both ばかり and ほど allow the speaker to ask for exactly two apples in an indirect (and therefore polite) way. With ばかり, the connotation is “I’d like just two apples, please“, and with ほど the connotation is something like “I’d like as many as two apples, please.” Simply put, both sentences express the same idea.
- E.g. *そのリンゴを二つくらいください。[I’d like about two of those apples please.] This sentence is strange because the speaker clearly wants exactly two apples, but asks for “About two apples“. くらい would make more sense when purchasing an approximate amount of something (e.g. bulk candy) rather than a discrete number of something.
- There are a couple special cases of ほど to take note of.
- (1) い-Adjective + (Noun) + ほど / な-Adjective + (Noun) + なほど can mean something to the effect of: “To the extent that X is Y, Z” or “The more Y X is, Z.” In this situation, the predicate can be positive or negative.
- E.g. 若い人ほど朝寝坊をする。[The younger a person is, the more they tend to oversleep.] A more literal translation might be “To the extent that a person is young, they oversleep.“
- E.g. 伝統的なものは、古いほど価値がある [When it comes to traditional items, they are worth more to to the extent that they are old (i.e. the older they are, the more valuable they are).]
- (2) The idiomatic expression XばXほど, Y means “The more X, the more Y.”
- E.g. 彼のことを知れば知るほど好きになる。[The more I get to know him, the better I like him.]
- E.g. 荷物は少なければ少ないほどいい。[The less baggage, the better.]
- (1) い-Adjective + (Noun) + ほど / な-Adjective + (Noun) + なほど can mean something to the effect of: “To the extent that X is Y, Z” or “The more Y X is, Z.” In this situation, the predicate can be positive or negative.
Example Sentences:
私はケンほど強くない。[I’m not as strong as Ken.]
この仕事は子供でもできるほどやさしい。[This job is easy to the extent that a could could do it.]
僕は君ほど速く歩けません。[I can’t walk as fast as you can.]
私は西田さんがあれほどピアノが引けるとは思わなかった。[I didn’t think that Mr. Nishida could play the piano that well.]
WILD Examples:
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