Hello. I’m trying to understand every particle’s purpose in a sentence and occasionally I come across ones like this that just don’t parse for me.
Among the sentences for 遂に there is the sentence 「何百回と失敗を繰り返し、遂に成功した。」
I understand what this sentence means as a whole but I do not understand what と signifies in 何百回と. Is it an onomatopoeia style usage? There’s something very basic I’m missing I think.
Hi @yolomeyo2 , welcome to the forums!
The と in the phrase indicates the result of a certain action or state. 何百回と, functioning like an adverb here, refers that the number of failures reaches hundreds of times as the result.
Other examples of this usage of と include: 二回三回と注意した (I warned them two and three times), 雨が雪となる (rain turned into snow), and 彼は伝説となった (he has become a legend).
In the pattern of ‘the number + と’ such as 何百回と and 二回三回と, と can be grammatically interchangeable with も to shift the nuance from ‘finally reaching the number’ to simply emphasizing ‘many times.’
The other と can usually be interchangeable with に. The general nuance difference between the two is that と is used for a change with twists and turns and focus on the result, while に is used for a more natural change. Also, と may sound a bit more bookish and formal.
I hope this answers your question!
This kind of nuance is another reason I love learning Japanese. So interesting.