English translation:
according to
Noun + によると
Noun + によれば
Hi, I’m not sure if this is the right place to say this, but there is also a によると article on Tae Kim’s site here. You might want to add it to the list of self-study pages!
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Awesome, thank you very much!
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I have noticed that many grammar points can kind of be understood as a combination of word + existing grammar rule. Thinking of those points in this way often helps me remember them more easily.
Does that work here? Does the “よる” have a particular meaning? jisho gives a “to be based on; to come from”-meaning for this よる.
Or can’t this grammar point be “reduced” in this way?
@mrnoone (I hope it’s okay to tag you like this for my dumb questions? 
)
Thanks in advance!
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So everything I’ve read so far indicates there no difference at all between によると and によれば. Is there not even slightest nuance or reason to use one over the other? Is one more commonly used than the other?
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Welcome back on community forums, long time no see 
It is best to think of them as identical. If I were pushed to name any difference, I would say that によれば is a little bit more formal, but this is my opinion. When it comes to frequency, “によると” is used more often.
I hope it helps,
Cheers!
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I’m having a bit of a hard time understanding the 聞くところ bit on this sentence, could someone run me through it?
Nevermind! I came up to something interesting, apparently it’s a very common pattern in regards of transferring information. Citing A Handbook of Japanese Grammar Patterns, page 352:
V-るところによると・よれば
Uses verbs that denote the output or transfer of information, like 聞く・話す・伝える and is followed by a clause that specifies the information has been relayed. The sentence often ends with expressions such as らしい・そうだ・とことだ. Often used in news reports.Example sentences:
聞くところによれば、あの二人は離婚したそうだ。
According to what I hear, apparently those two are divorced.特派員の伝えるところによると、アフリカの基金はさらに悪化しているらしい。
What we hear from the special correspondents is that the famine in Africa seems to be getting even worse.
With this in mind, wouldn’t this be an entirely separate grammar point? One that bases off this one.
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It may be helpful to indicate that this comes from 依る (as far as I can tell from https://kotobank.jp/word/に依ると-351271). The way I then think about it is “if depend on A, then B”, since it matches the conditional form. Is that correct?
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@Daru
Hey and sorry for the slow answer 
I have fixed the translation and added a note about ところによると for the time being. We will likely split them later 
Thank you for the feedback!
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Hi, I noticed that this grammar point is listed as being in Genki II (2nd ed.), but for some reason is not included in the Genki II path, which seems to be an oversight.
@nanyaLang Thank you for your comment. We chose only to reference Genki in the Readings section as によると only appears as a side note to 〜そうです and is not a standalone, fully fleshed-out grammar point in Genki II. Another reason that によると・によれば does not appear in the Genki II Path is that it is an N3 grammar point with more advanced sentences that include more grammar structures that you may not have come across yet in Genki. Cheers!
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A Dictionary of Advanced Japanese Grammar: Page 459 によると
Also, the Tae Kim link in the resources section is wrong.
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Added and fixed
Thank you for the feedback,
Cheers!
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It looks like there are now two links to the same resource.
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It has been fixed! Thank you for pointing it out!