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This was a sentence from a reading comprehension about gifts in Japan, more specifically Valentine's gifts here.

I get that the「どんな人にでもあげてしまうというのが、」part means "No matter who you give it to", but what about 「贈り物好きの日本人らしいところである」? "贈り物好きの日本人" is "Japanese who like gifts", but what's the meaning of らしい and ところ in this sentence? らしい is the equivalent of そうです and I've never seen ところ used with anything but verbs..

Kay
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    It seems the problem begins with your understanding of どんな人にでもあげてしまうというの or more specifically the final の or というの. It doesn’t mean “No matter who you give it to.” It is the subject of the sentence, not an adverbial phrase. – aguijonazo Sep 29 '21 at 15:03
  • Ah I see, then what does it mean instead? – Kay Sep 29 '21 at 15:28
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    Would you understand the sentence if that (という)の were replaced with ところ to match the subject with the predicate like 〜ところが〜ところである? As for らしい and ところ, do these help? Contrasting っぽい、らしい、みたい & Does 「わるいところ」also have the meaning of "negative aspect of X” – aguijonazo Sep 29 '21 at 15:42
  • Oh wait, so are you saying that since とういのが=ところが, the grammar is " 〜ところが〜ところである"(which is the same as "〜ことは〜が", right?) ? So the whole sentence would actually translate to something like "No matter who you give it to, they'll like it" ? – Kay Sep 29 '21 at 20:52
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    No. I’m afraid your translation is rather completely wrong, so wrong I don't know where you got lost. (Didn’t I say the first part was wrong already?) I'm saying the basic structure of the sentence is NP1がNP2である, the core parts of NP1 and NP2 are the noninalizer の and ところ, respectively, and this particular の could be replaced with ところ without changing the meaning of the sentence much. If you read the links about らしい and ところ but still don’t get how they work in your sentence, you would probably need to clarify where exactly you are stuck. In other words, your question would need more focus. – aguijonazo Sep 30 '21 at 01:26
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    Oh I think I just got it! I was a bit tired when I first checked out the posts but now that I've read them again I think I get where I was making a mistake. I thought ~らしい was modifying the whole sentence, meaning "it seems ~". But it was actually only modifying the noun, 日本人. And if it's used that way then ところ being there also makes sense. So the actual translation would be something like "Gifting anyone no matter who they are is typical of Japanese[, who like to give presents].". Is that right? – Kay Sep 30 '21 at 17:43
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    @Kay Yes, your understanding is correct. – broccoli forest Oct 01 '21 at 04:31
  • Ah okay thank u for the confirmation!! And thanks a lot @aguijonazo for your help! – Kay Oct 02 '21 at 08:49

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