Question about this sentence 大体の人は食べたり寝たりするのが好きです

How does the nuance change if I use ほとんど instead of 大体?

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I’m not sure if it’s technically accurate, but the way I’ve always thought of it in my head is:

ほとんど - almost all

大体 - for the most part

I would love to hear the actual differences tho too lol

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‘大体の人は’ sounds a bit weird to me. Maybe you’d normally say “大体、人は”, meaning that “Generally, people do x”

“ほとんどの人は” sounds more natural in my head than ‘大体の人は’.

But that may just be me :sweat_smile:

I find that interesting since Bunpro seems to only accept ‘大体の人は’ :laughing:

My understanding of both words is similar to Delta’s:

大体 = Generally.
ほとんど = Almost always; For the most part.

So I think the meaning would change as much as it does in English (negligible) if they were interchanged, but that’s just my guess.

Nuance doesn’t change much at all really. I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if I read either of them in terms of naturalness.

大体 = A big portion of (in this case people)
ほとんど = The majority of (in this case people)

Perhaps ほとんど implies slightly more people, but the difference is probably negligible.

大体の人 is a pretty common expression. The main difference is that 大体の人 modifies people as ‘a large amount of people do xxx’, where 大体、人 modifies the whole statement, so would sound more like ‘in a large amount of cases involving people xxx is done’

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