到頭(とうとう)Finally, After all

Most Recent Replies (13 in total)

• 

  Pushindawood

  finally
  after all

  Structure

  • とうとう + Phrase

  View on Bunpro

• 

  ulurujamman

  For the question:

  ____休むことができる

  I think there are some other potential answers here that could be given orange texts rather than being immediately marked as incorrect -

  e.g. 最後に, 結局

• 

  Pushindawood

  Good call! I have updated the answers that throw hints/warnings for this grammar point to catch more answers like 最後に and 結局. Cheers!

• 

  deltacat3

  What makes this sentence masculine?
  
• 

  Pushindawood

  @deltacat3 Hey! I apologize for the confusion. The “[masculine]” hint at the end of the sentence refers to 飯めし in 昼飯ひるめし, which is mostly used by men when referring to a meal. I have updated the hint to include this information and hopefully clear up any confusion. Cheers!

• 

  goforbroke

  Could やっと be used instead of とうとう in the context of “finally?” I was looking at this sentence:

  たべものの動画をやっと見れました！おいしそうですね！

  Then I thought maybe it could be rewritten as:

  とうとうたべものの動画を見れました！ おいしそうですね！

  Are やっと and とうとう interchangeable?

• 

  mathijsdm

  I’ll give it a shot based on my own understanding of the matter, but please be aware that I am still studying myself, so take everything here with a grain of salt. I will share some resources I checked before writing this post though, so that you could verify if you wanted.

  Not really. Though there are situations in which やっと and とうとう can be used interchangeably, these are somewhat rare, as often they’ll hint at either a positive or negative nuance about the topic. First a bit on the nuance difference between the two. You’ll often hear people say that やっと has a bit of a “happy” feeling to it. The ex...

• 

  goforbroke

  Thank you mathijsdm for the explanation! Much appreciated!

• 

  ericfournier2

  Hi!

  I am confused by what seems to be a contradiction in the last example sentence and the boxed text of the grammar write up.

  The last example is:

  とうとう夏休みが終わる日が来た

  While the boxed text says:

  Caution - とうとう is not used in situations where you expect something to happen/start, but there has not actually been a period of time in which some sort of effort was being made to achieve a result. A good example of this is the changing of seasons. You might want to say ‘finally, it’s summer!’, but this is not something that anyone has done anything to achieve.

  Why is it okay to use とうとう for saying the last day of summer break is here, but not to say a season is starting?

• 

  nekoyama

  I think that box goes a bit too far; とうとう doesn’t require active effort by the speaker.

  It’s however still true that いよいよ is used much more commonly with a season that’s just starting; I think it’s because it sounds more positive (though it can be negative too) and it works when an event that the speaker was waiting for starts. When I say いよいよ夏が来た I’m saying it’s finally summer; I’ve been waiting for summer. I’m not saying that after long months of it not being summer, in the end summer came after all.

• 

  ericfournier2

  Thank you for your explanation!

• 

  TimTimTimmey2

  Sorry for the zombie, but I think this is the place to ask. At the end of the grammar point, there is a warning:

  Caution

  とうとう is not used in situations where you expect something to happen/start, but there has not actually been a period of time in which some sort of effort was made to achieve a result.

  A good example of this is the changing of seasons. You might want to say ‘finally, it’s summer!’, but this is not something that anyone has done anything to achieve. Rather, it came naturally. In these cases, いよいよ will be used, and has the nuance of ‘finally’, or ‘at last’ (in relation to something starting/happening).

  But the example used right above that is this:

  とうとう夏休みだ！

  I assume this sentence is in refference to summer break of school, in which case it would not be something someone made happen either, since it always happens at set intervals. Does it work here because it references summer vacation from...

• 

  IcyIceBear

  I took it as an effort they achieved through schoolwork. Like “finally after working through school, we get a break! We made it to summer!” Kind of thing

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  TimTimTimmey2

  Ahh that makes a lot of sense actually! Thank you so much!