41957
> 動物王国のムツゴロウさんちの娘になってもいいと思うほど、動物好きなまる子だが、... Maruko is a fan of animals to the
> extent that she thinks it's okay to become the daughter of _something to do
> with animal kingdoms and mud skippers_

Whilst I'm fascinated to know what 動物王国のムツゴロウさんち is all about, my primary
question is about the structure of the sentence.

There seems to be a noun missing. If I had tried to put this in Japanese I
would have written:

> ...ほど、まる子は動物がすきだが...  
>  to the extent that ... Maruko likes animals

But the original sentence is

> to the extent that ... Maruko (who is an animal fan) is xxx?

where xxx is missing.

Is my alternative sentence correct? How can I understand the grammar of the
original sentence?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-24T16:14:53.570
41948
2016-12-25T10:41:55.107
7944
question
grammar particle-ほど
Missing noun in sentence using ほど
I think this is one of those times where it's hard to read this using our
implicit biases as non-native Japanese speakers. If this were English it'd be
an incomplete sentence, but this works in Japanese _because it works in
Japanese_.

> 動物王国のムツゴロウさんちの娘になってもいいと思うほど、動物好きなまる子だが

If we wanted to simplify this sentence as much as possible, we could reduce it
to

> まる子だが

Which is really just the author stating something about Maruko before
continuing on to the rest of the sentence. If you think about it this way, the
rest is a bit easier to parse.

> 動物王国のムツゴロウさんちの娘になってもいいと思うほど、動物好き

Such a fan of animals that she wouldn't mind becoming the daughter of a
mudskipper = Maruko

The hard part about reading sentences like this is that it's constructed as
what looks like a separate sentence, but it's closer to a string of dependent
clauses tying into a larger idea. We do this in English as well, but we just
switch the order around a bit

> Maruko, such a fan of animals that she wouldn't mind becoming the daughter
> of a mudskipper, XXX

Where XXX is the information that you perceived as missing in the Japanese
version (it probably just comes after the chunk you quoted).
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2016-12-24T19:51:27.900
41954
2016-12-24T19:51:27.900
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41948
answer
First of all, who is 「動物王国{どうぶつおうこく}のムツゴロウさん」? He is a very well-known and
highly popular figure in Japan. When the older half of the country hear the
word "animals", they think of him. I will just let Wiki explain below. It even
talks about what his 「動物王国」 is about.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masanori_Hata>

Next, just a brief explanation of 「動物好{どうぶつず}きなまる子」. For those unfamiliar, the
「好き」 part in this phrase, is read 「 **ず** き」 and not 「 **す** き」.

For reading comprehension, I recommend that one regard 「動物好きな」 as just an
adjective meaning " ** _animal-loving_** ". So, we have a "animal-loving
Maruko" here.

I think many are already familiar with this, but 「～～さん **ち** 」 means "~~'s
home", "~~'s family", etc. The 「ち」 comes from 「うち」.

Now, you called 「動物王国のムツゴロウさんちの娘になってもいいと思うほど、動物好きなまる子だが、...」 a sentence, but
is it one? **_Grammatically, no, because it lacks a predicate_**. If the
author actually ended this with the "...", however, then it is an "honorary"
sentence. **_To make it as literal as possible_** , it means:

> "It is Maruko who loves animals to the extent that she would not mind
> becoming the daughter of Mr. Mutsugoro of the Animal Kingdom."

The TL might sound awkward because I translated, as I said, a non-sentence
that does not even have a predicate.

Even a one-step more literal translation would be:

> "Maruko who loves animals so much that she would not mind becoming the
> daughter of Mr. Mutsugoro of the Animal Kingdom, but ......"

There you could see what I mean by "non-sentence" and "no predicate". It says
nothing about what Maruko actually did.

In any case, you seem to have a good grip on the phrase in question. It is a
good sign that you felt something was missing.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-12-25T00:13:19.653
41957
2016-12-25T10:41:55.107
2016-12-25T10:41:55.107
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answer