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Okay so the のほうが / より combo is to my understanding used to say something is more than or less than in Japanese and if you add の to the short form version of a verb it the expresses the idea of doing that verb. If I wanted to say I like doing something more than doing something else would combining these two together be the correct way to say this? If so, how would this be written? I have two different ideas about how it would be written, but I'm not really too sure on either so I'll leave them in examples below.

ex1. ぼくは およぐののほうが さんぽするより すきです

ex2. ぼくは およぐほうが さんぽするより すきです

As you probably noted immediately the only real difference between the two is the double の. Since they both use の I'm unsure if I would put two in like example one or merge them together. Other than that I've really only seen examples of the のほうが / より combo with nouns so I'm not too sure if this is even the proper way using verbs.

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    およぐほう or およぐののほう are correct, but およぐのほう is not.
    – user4092
    Nov 28, 2015 at 6:41

1 Answer 1

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With verbs, no の is necessary at all. You can say [僕は泳ぐ方が散歩するより好きです]{ぼくはおよぐほうがさんぽするよりすきです}. That being said, as user4092 says, you can use の, in which case it's [僕は泳ぐのの方が散歩するより好きです]{ぼくはおよぐののほうがさんぽするよりすきです}. It's impermissible to only use one の, because the two の are different. (Though it may have been permissible archaically, where most particles could directly follow verbs.)

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    I should probably also advise you that the general name for what you call the short form is the dictionary form (or plain form). What you probably call the long form is called the polite form. The names long and short form imply the dictionary form came after the polite form, when in fact the dictionary forms predate ~ます by many, many years.
    – Angelos
    Nov 27, 2015 at 21:40

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