たとえ〜てもEven if…is the case, Supposing that

Most Recent Replies (10 in total)

• 

  mrnoone

  English translation:
  even if…is the case
  supposing that

  Structure:
  たとえ + Verb[ ても ]
  たとえ + いAdj[く ても ]
  たとえ + なAdj + でも
  たとえ + Noun + でも

  View on Bunpro

• 

  megatron0000

  Since にしても is marked as related, I wanted to grasp their differences… looking at example sentences for both, they seem really similar (it looks like I could always change にしても for たとえ〜も and vice-versa).

  That said, taking a sentence as example:

  たとえ 彼が太っ ても 力士にならないだろう。彼は相撲向きではないから

  And changing to にしても:

  彼が太るにしても 力士にならないだろう。彼は相撲向きではないから

  Would there be an indication, in the second one but not the first, that he is already getting fat ? In other words, the second talks about a situation that is already somewhat happening , while the first is purely hypothetical ?

• 

  mrnoone

  Hey

  Sorry for the late answer

  Yes, you are right, they are often interchangeable though にしても has some interesting nuances and sometimes cannot be swapped with ても.

  First of all, にしても comes from にする “to make”, “to decide”
  It conveys desire・decision of the speaker or someone/something he/she is speaking about.
  As you said, にしても might mean that the situation is actually the case (he is gaining weight), or extremely probable. Therefore it cannot be used when something is improbable.
  In ても case, the probability is lower (there is another expression, としても which expresses an even lower degree of probability).

  So if we compare those two:
  彼が太る にしても 力士にならないだろう。

  たとえ...

• 

  s1212z

  This example came up on a different grammar point (きる）:
  たとえ どんなことがあっ ても 勇者ゆうしゃさまをしんじきります。
  No matter what will happen, I trust the hero completely

  I’m having a hard time seeing how “Even if” could be converted in this translation. You guys added on the last example using “No matter…” and it seemed to work but not this example

  I’m adding a “No matter if…” as an application meaning

• 

  s1212z

  I think what was confusing me on the last question was the combination of
  たとえ was the addition どんな(に）

  This came up on another outside example and I guessing the combination of たとえどんなに is adding emphasis (?) kinda like a もし＋conditional situation…am I right here? The seems to be an "Even if/no matter how’ combination that is complimenting these two points.
• 

  mrnoone

  That’s right!

• 

  Clornhole

  I’m a bit confused about what appears to be the inclusion of two words/speech particles conveying “even if”. たとえ and ても both can be translated as “even if”, so why have both? I feel like for this grammar point–and many others-- traditional English translations miss the mark by telling the learner the English equivalent without explaining the logic of the Japanese language in vivo. Can anyone help?

• 

  nekoyama

  たとえ is an expression that allows us to indicate the direction we’re going in at the beginning of the sentence. Because it adds direction beyond the bare minimum, it can also emphasise the “even if” aspect. I’d not compare it to ても as such, but rather to other similar expressions like もし or 仮に.

  たとえA - I’m going to talk about something that is true anyway. Even if the extreme and/or low probability A also were to be true, that would not change anything.

  仮にA - I’m going to talk about a hypothetical situation that might or might not happen if A is true. The main point I want you to understand right now is that it’s all hypothetical.

  もしA - I’m going to talk about a hypothetical situation where A is true, but the main thing I’m interested in and want to talk about is what happens in that case where A is true.

  In English, we can say something like “even if A, B” and we don’t need to do much to connect A and B. Even if we leave out the comma it kind of still...

• 

  Clornhole

  Alright, that makes sense. I had forgotten it before my original reply, but I had the same confusion with もし too, so I’m glad you included it in your reply.
  I think it might help me out–with my English-orientated brain–to mentally add parentheses around the たとえ, sort of like one does for English phrases like “for instance”, “case in point”, “for example”, or many sentence opening adverbs like “additionally”.
  I really appreciate the effort you put into your reply; it’s been a great help!

• 

  Buby690

  Please does that mean with にしても, he is most likely to gain weight but with たとえーでも he is unlikely to gain weight

• 

  djp

  仮令忙しくても、責任はちゃんと果たさなければいけない

  I’m posting in regard to the たとえ〜ても grammar point. When I read this sentence I want to interpret this as “Even if you are busy you must properly fulfill/meet your responsibilities” but the bunpro translation is " Even if** you are busy, you will get in trouble if you don’t fulfill your responsibilities."

  There are a lot of sentences I come across like this where I don’t know if there is a cultural context at play. In this sentence where does the “you’ll be in trouble if you don’t” meaning come from? Sure, if you must do something I suppose you’ll be in trouble for not doing it but that’s reading extra into the sentence (in my opinion). I could see that being a proper translation if there were extra context but it seems like a leap.

  As I’ve progressed through bunpro I’ve mostly considered things like this as a misunderstanding on my part but when I’ve used grammar points properly according to bunpro ( the ご覧 points as an example) I...