Fuumei said:
"tabereba taberu hodo oishiku narimasu"
This usage of 'hodo' is really confusing my brain, a lot. I know what it is supposed to mean, (the more i eat it the more tasty it gets) but I can't break down the sentence structure to give me an idea of what is actually said. Any ideas how I can wrap my peanut-sized brain around this one?
It's quite fascinating and amusing that I saw this today because, just this morning, I read about "hodo" from some material I printed online. And given that your example sentence is precisely identical to one I saw, I strongly suspect that you got it from
Tae Kim's guide, right? We learned about "hodo" on the same day, it seems.
I'll break it down:
「食べれば 食べる ほど 、 おいしく なる。」
"Tabereba taberu hodo, oishiku naru."
The base verb is "taberu," an ichidan verb meaning "to eat." The conditional form is "tabereba," and this essentially means "if
x eats." Since the subject is unknown, I suppose it's safe to substitute "you" for this example. Thus, "if you eat."
Next is "taberu" followed immediately by "hodo." As Tae Kim's guide says, "hodo" boils down to "extent to/of." Literally, you can think of this as "eating-extent" or "extent of eating." (This is generally how I do things in my head.) More naturally, it's "to the extent of eating" or "to the extent that you eat." When you add the conditional "tabereba," the sentence to this point essentially reads thusly: "If one eats, (then) to the extent that you eat, ..."
Make sense thus far? Don't try too much to fit it into the scheme of "the more you [
verb]" meaning it's analogous to. Try to take it at face value.
Finally, "oishiku naru": "Oishiku" originates from the pure adjective "oishii" 「おいしい」, meaning "tasty; delicious." I don't know if you have studied this yet, but whenever an adjective is applied to a verb, it takes adverbial form. For pure adjectives (which end with -i), you drop the final -i and add -ku. So "oishii" becomes "oishi
ku."
The verb that "oishiku" is applied to is "naru," meaning "to become." Thus, "becomes tasty." (In a more literal sense, it translates to "becomes tastily." That's just how Japanese adjectives work.)
Let's see if I can concoct more examples of this usage:
みんなはミルクを飲めば飲むほど、元気です！
Minna wa MIRUKU wo nomeba nomu hodo, genki desu!
The more milk everyone drinks, the healthier they are!
Literally: As for everyone, if they drink milk, to the extent that they drink it, they'll be healthy!
Well, it's late and I'm tired, so that the only example I've got on me at the moment. I hope this provided some help to you. (It's nice to see progress in myself as well. I'm slowly becoming useful. やった！)