"Hodo..."
 

On my long difficult journey of learning Japanese I keep coming across a word over and over and I have tried my hardest to find out what it means. I have looked through all the books I have about learning Japanese, dictionaries, etc. and even when I find something trying to explain it, I don't understand what it means.

"Hodo"
What does it mean? I hear it so much. I have also heard many times
"Naru hodo" what does that mean also.

Sorry if this is a very idiotic question to some people. I actually am very good at most Japanese and other things I get the hang of quickly but this I still have trouble. Can someone help me and end my suffering?

なるほど is roughly "I see" or something like "Right"

I don't know of a ほど by itself (rikaichan says degree; extent?), unless you are talking about　歩道（ほどう）which is sidewalk =/

Doesn't make sense. You just stated the following in another thread.

You couldn't possibly do that without even knowing what ほど and なるほど mean.

そんな単純な単語や表現も知らないくせに、「日本語け っこう知ってる」なんてよく言えるよな~。ウケる！で� �おじさん嘘つきは大きらい！反論があればもちろん日� �語でしてね。:D

Umm.. I CAN speak and read a lot. If I don't know one thing it doesn't mean I don't. If I hear "Hodo" after a sentence, I still know what the rest of the sentence means I just get stuck on "Hodo" I have yet to go to Japan so I haven't had a chance to really speak with native speakers but the amount of studying I have done with conversation and kanji and the amount I do EVERY day and will continue to do until I am fluent, means I could pretty much survive as I am now, but I won't go to Japan until I am a lot more fluent. I can watch Japanese movies and understand about 75% of what they are saying. Also
Forgive me my computer can no longer type in Japanese because my brother removed it but I can still see the letters

And I hate people who call me a liar when I know damn well I have no reason to lie! Learning Japanese is one of the most important things to me right now. I practice speaking, listening, and writing it everyday so trust me when I say I know what I am talking about.

Thank you very much. But what about, this example
なぜか せつないほど懐かしくなるはず
that is from a song. I know basically what the line means but what is the purpose of "Hodo" in "Setsunai hodo"

If I may add to the conversation, I have a few things to say. First, it's best if you don't get so worked up about being called a liar over the internet. For one, you have only 23 posts, so you're an unknown quantity. Also, taking an aggressive tone is not going to make you any friends here.

Sashimister is just suspicious because we get a bunch of people who talk a big game about their japanese skills. Perhaps you can understand how frustrating it would be to have people who claim to be fluent giving bad advice to forum members with honest questions. Come across enough people who lie about their abilities and anyone would have a bit of a short fuse with people who appear to be misrepresenting their abilities. If you want help, my best suggestion is to just forget about it and show some humility when asking for help (I don't mean to sound aggressive when I say that, by the way).

As to your japanese question, ほど does mean extent or degree, like Jesselt said, but I doubt you'll ever find a translation that literal.

If I was to make part of the phrase just '切ないほど懐かしい' then I'm fairly sure it would mean something along the lines of 'So reminiscent it's heartrending'. 切ないほど is 'To the extent that something is heartrending/painful'. To put this into perspective (and intentionally ignoring なぜか because... well... I'd feel more comfortable trying to understand it if I had more context, but not with just this at my level), I would say the phrase is something like 'So reminiscent that it should hurt'. As always, if a more fluent speaker corrects me, go with their corrections.

I understand. I know he has a right to be suspicious but he doesn't know me. I for cannot stand annoying people who claim they are "fluent" when they aren't or can only say simple things like "the cat ate a banana" or something.

My goal is to learn real modern Japanese and be able to completely understand Japanese movies, music, and most importantly people who I will meet in the future. And I have done my best to accomplish this goal so far. I am not fluent, but I can speak and understand a lot. I have been learning Japanese since I was a little kid, my older sister can speak it. So I have had a lot of experience with it and will continue to.

Trust me DO understand how frustrating it can be. I have had to deal with countless people, in Japanese classes, in school, online and everywhere, who 1. cannot understand or speak hardly anything and if they can it has to be spoken very slowly or simply.

And 2. cannot write even any kana letter and cannot pronounce Japanese right.
I am going by my own experiences, I was in Japanese classes where I was the youngest one because I was 15 and they were all in their 20's and I always had to help some people and always got a really bad partner who had no idea what was going on. I constantly had to hear annoying rambles of anime and manga and no real talk about Japanese.

I hate people who only care about watching anime so they try to learn Japanese and they go around saying "Kawaii" and think they know how to speak it.

I can't stand those kind of people and I would feel ashamed and embarrassed if I ever acted like that.
Thank you for your answer.

Don't worry about them; in my experience at university studying Japanese, they're the ones who fail and give up Japanese after one or two semesters of pronouncing らりるれろ with a hard, American "r" sound.

Haha I know! I remember lots of people who were in my classes who had already failed it multiple times and they never did any homework, they never listened to the instructions and they would only babble about anime. They always complained and whined about how something was hard or that they were going to fail, when they didn't even put an ounce of effort into learning. I laughed at them so much. And you're right about the "r" sound it was so funny! They pronounce every word with a heavy american accent too.

I can relate with you Mira, even though I don't speak Japanese that well :)
ほど is a word I have learned when I was studying the way of comparing things.
より and ほど both assume a translation roughly as "than". The difference is between the way you compare: より shows a higher degree and ほど a lower degree.
Examples:

あの時計の方がこの時計よりもっと高いです。
あの時計はこの時計ほど高くないです。

In the first case you read it as "that watch is more expensive that this watch", while in the second case I would read it as "that watch is not so expensive like this watch".

But as I said I pretty much relate to you, because I find ほど in many situations where it seems to be going beyond the comparative meaning...and haven't figure out yet what meaning to give thus I never understand the phrases with ほど LOL (and yes, it is used alot)