欠点ゆえにそれだけいっそう彼が好きだ。

English Translation

I like him all the better for his faults.

is the meaning of ゆえに(故に) similar to that of 結果?
“X の結果、…” = “As a result of X, …”

Or, perhaps から or ので is a closer synonym.

@ericaw
Before taking your question, I need to say that the original Japanese sentence (ID: 175946) sounds very unnatural sourced from notorious Tanaka Corpus… There is another translation available on Tatoeba from the same English sentence (ID: 107903):

彼は欠点があるからかえって私は彼が好きなのだ。

ID: 107903 is still a bit wordy, but it sounds natural. It’s better to drop the first 彼は and simply say:

欠点があるからかえって私は彼が好きなのだ (or 彼を好きになった).

You can find many fine examples with the expression かえって on 英辞郎.


故に or ゆえに doesn’t mean “as a result of X” but “because of X”. You cannot replace 故に with 結果として because “as a result of X” doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a strong cause-effect relation. It merely means there is a sequential consequence. You can replace 故に with だから, から, ので or が理由で. We sometimes spell なぜ (why) as 何故 in Kanji. So, I hope you get it.

The Kanji 故 has several meanings:

  1. old; previous; original (used as in 故郷 = hometown; 温故知新 = to learning from the history to invent something new)
  2. intentional; reason; connection (used as in 何故 = why?; 故意の不作為 = (legal term) deliberate neglect; 縁故主義 = nepotism)
  3. special incidents, especially bad ones (used as in 事故 = accident; 故障 = out-of-order)

Each of them looks so different, but all of them actually share the same connotation: “traceability”. The first meaning is “to go back to the history”. The second one is “root-cause” or “sharing the same root”. The third is “a bad chain reaction”.


Let me explain why the original Japanese sentence sounds awful: (ID: 175946) “欠点ゆえにそれだけいっそう彼が好きだ。”

  1. それだけ and いっそう are super redundant. You should drop それだけ.
  2. いっそう or 一層 means “to get more X”. You cannot say いっそう好きだ but you should say いっそう好きになった. 好きになる illustrates the change of the degree of one’s affection. 好きだ is the current status.
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