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Gogaku

All N3 grammar

N3

たとえ〜ても

Even if… (emphatic concessive supposition)machine translation

Formationたとえ + て-form + も (verbs: 〜ても; い-adjectives: 〜くても; nouns/な-adjectives: 〜でも)

たとえ〜ても is an emphatic version of the ても you already use fluently: add たとえ at the front and the sentence becomes "EVEN IF…, still…". たとえ signals to the listener in advance that what's coming is only a supposition — possibly even an unlikely one — but the outcome remains unchanged.

Because たとえ marks a supposition, this pattern specializes in things that have NOT happened: たとえ両親に反対されても、結婚するつもりだ (even if my parents oppose it, I still intend to marry). For even stronger emphasis, Japanese speakers add a question word: たとえ何があっても (no matter what happens).

Nuance compared with bare ても: 雨が降っても行く is an ordinary statement; たとえ雨が降っても行く sounds like a declaration of determination. In casual speech, たとえ is often replaced by もし〜ても or dropped entirely, but in exams and in writing, たとえ〜ても is a fixed pair you need to recognize on sight.

Examples

Related patterns

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