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I know there are other questions on this site about が and けど at the end of a sentence, but I couldn't find one about interrogative sentences. Context: in a manga, person A said something that his friend (person B) interpreted as a joke. The dialogue continues as follows:

Person A: だって８割はホントだもん。

Person B: へぇー　８割本音を言わない男が？

I don't understand the meaning of the second sentence. In particular, I don't understand why there's a negative verb and the value of が. Was something left out? I feel like there could be a じゃなかった after が. Person A in the manga is a reserved type, so I thought it could be translated as:

"Weren't you the type that doesn't say 80% of his true feelings?"

Is my guess right?

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4 Answers 4

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That が is a subject marker, and the corresponding predicate is omitted.

A: だって8割はホントだもん。

B: へぇー　8割本音を言わない男が（8割もホントのことを言うの／そんなに本音で喋ったの）?
The person who doesn't say his true feelings 80% of the time (says that much truth this time)?

But it would be too wordy if you tried to translate this literally, so your translation attempt seems fine to me.

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  • Thank you for your answer. In the examples in brackets you put the verb in positive form, why is it negative in the original?
    – Marco
    Commented May 16, 2017 at 5:11
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    Do you understand that 言わない is just a relative clause that modifies 男? The predicate of the main clause is omitted (and non-negative).
    – naruto
    Commented May 16, 2017 at 5:50
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Person A: だって８割はホントだもん。
Person B: へぇー　８割本音を言わない男が？

The following your guess is not right/correct.

"Weren't you the type that doesn't say 80% of his true feelings?"

As you guessed something was left out in the sentence by Person B. The full sentence might be like:

Person B: へぇー　８割本音を言わない男が 「８割はホントだ」と言うのは疑{うたが}わしいくないか ？
Huh, isn't it doubtful that the man who does not say the 80% true intention says "80% is true"? Huh, isn't it doubtful that you say "80% is true" who usually hide the 80% of your true intention"?

In this context, I think, Person B used 男{おとこ} in stead of you.

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The end of the question was dropped and assumed obvious.
This is often the case in Japanese and many phrase parts get dropped all the time.

I don't have enough context to tell you more about your case, but here is an example in English.

A : 80% of men are perverts!
B : WHAT!? 80% of men are? <-the last word, "pervert", was dropped.

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Person A: だって８割はホントだもん。

Person B: へぇー　８割本音を言わない男が？

So little context to be sure, but my best guess is Person A is arguing what the 男 have said or done is 80% based on reality and Person B jokes by saying the man usually says only 20% of his real thought.

As for the が, what is supposed to follow it is "８割はホント(の事言ったの？)" or something like that.

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