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The sentence

男子より女子の方がロマンチックよ。

apparently translates to

Girls are more romantic than boys.

But I'm having trouble parsing this. First off, where is the sentence's verb? Second, the literal translation seems to be something like:

((Young men than) young women)'s direction romantic

Is this correct? If so, it doesn't seem to make any sense to me.

Eiríkr Útlendi
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George
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1 Answers1

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より is used to compare things, 方 can have differents meanings depending the context (as usual in japanese), here it's used to make comparaison, opposed as より.

So 男子より -> Compared to (young)men, 女子のほうがロマンチックよlady are (more) romantic!

where is the sentence's verb?

After ロマンチック, the copula です(だ) is omitted in this sentance but it's your "verb" "to be" (kind of)

Ryu
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  • Thanks for the clarification. I thought only sentences ending in i-adjs can omit verbs (since the copula is inside i-adjs, implicitly). I guess this is wrong! – George Jul 22 '22 at 20:32
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    ^ @George, よ can function as a copula. It sounds soft/feminine. eg 「もうすぐ春よ。」(noun+よ) 「〇〇が好きよ。」(na-adj.+よ) See naruto's answer here: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/61185/9831 (`よ and ね work without だ...`) Also, 明鏡国語辞典 says: "よ〘終助詞〙❷ 活用語の終止形や**体言、形容動詞語幹**、終助詞「わ」「の」など**に付く**。 ... **体言や形容動詞に直接「よ」を付ける**とき、上昇調のイントネーションを伴うと**やわらかい言い方**になる（「あしたは休みよ」）。" – Chocolate Jul 23 '22 at 03:45