~ても question

Japanese
#1

So I was looking over some practice tests and I saw a question I found a bit confusing, its this.

たくさんのことを( )言われても、覚えられません。

  1. 一度に
  2. 偶然
  3. 十分
  4. 平等に

The correct answer being 1 (一度に）

Which I found rather confusing the harder I thought about it, as I have been considering this to mean something along the lines of “Even if you tell me a lot of things all at once, I can’t remember.” I had originally picked 十分 as my answer in an attempt to make the sentence be contrastive, however it seems its incorrect.

I find the correct answer hard to understand as it’s not contrastive, its rather expected. Much like if you were to say “Even if you shoot me many times, I will bleed” this wouldn’t make sense as its the expected outcome you’d have to say "I wont bleed’ for it to make sense.

The presumed outcome from being told a ton of things all at once…would be that it is now harder to remember right? So how is it contrastive? Wouldn’t the sentence make more sense as saying “Even if you tell me one at a time, I still can’t remember” or something like that?

I went and checked through bunpros example sentences and it fits with my previous thinking

トレーニングをしても、痩やせない。

Even if I work out, I don’t lose weight.

靴下くつしたを履はいても、足あしが冷つめたいです。

Even if I wear socks, my feet get cold.

たくさんサラダを食たべても、お腹なかいっぱいにならないんですよ。

Even if I eat a lot of salad, I don’t get full.

All of these provide contrastive statements where B is an unexpected outcome.

I would appreciate your guys take on this and where I am going wrong in my thought process about this.

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#2

Contrastive to who?
I think the sentence is contrastive to the feelings of the person trying to teach the speaker something.
This may be a lot of assumptions on my end, but “ても” doesn’t have to be an unexpected outcome to every person in the scenario. If someone is trying to teach you something but does so in a way that isn’t conducive to your learning, it’s unlikely they’re doing it on purpose, so in this case you’re informing them that their expected outcome is incorrect.
Obviously in this case I know the answer to the question, but “十分” here sounds really clunky and unnatural, and by reading out every example sentence in my head the only answers I would consider would be 1 or 4.

#3

Was this in the grammar section? Personally, I’d immediately narrow it down to 1 or 4 just because of the に particle. After that, 平等に doesn’t make sense in the context of the sentence which just leaves 一度に. After inputting it in the sentence, the meaning makes sense.
Even if you tell me many things (a lot of information) at once, I won’t be able to remember.

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#4

This is also just a silly aside, but this indeed WOULD be contrastive if the one doing the shooting was delusional enough to believe that the speaker was some form of god that in fact wouldn’t bleed upon being shot.
Other sentences like this include:

  • “Even if you kill me it won’t bring him/her back to life”.
  • “Even if you start studying now, the exam is already over.”

etc. etc.
Obviously in these cases the result is common sense, but humans like to forget such complex things from time to time.

#5

I think you are completely right in that ～ても needs to show some sort of unexpected outcome, and on the surface the outcome seems expected, so the sentence seems odd.

It starts to make sense if the speaker implies that remembering is expected by the person who told them many things at once.
“Do you really expect me to remember all that? Obviously I cannot.”

Some more examples from LN’s I’ve been reading:

黒髪についてとやかく言われても大目に見よう。
Even if people tell me this or that (criticize) about my black hair (expecting me to be hurt and feel ostracized), I’ll just ignore it.

The speaker find her black hair completely normal, but is also aware that the people in question are brought up in a culture that does not.

あとがきを書けと言われても何を書けば良いのかピンときません。
Even if I’m told to write an afterword, I have no idea what to write about.

For many people in the industry it might be completely normal that an author writes some generic thankyous in the afterword. So a generally expected outcome might be that the author just writes it. But not for the speaker.

And in general there’s a frequently used construction Xと言われても困ります, which is a more polite way of saying “are you crazy, what do you expect me to do”.

After re-reading this, it looks like I’ve been trying to express the same idea :slight_smile:

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#6

Something something, great minds think alike?

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#7

Ah, and to separately comment on other options.
I’m not sure if absence of に is enough to disqualify 十分 and 偶然. Just looking through some example sentences, there are plenty of cases where に is omitted, but they are in plain speech (again, novels), and this is polite speech.

#8

Yeah, but have you ever heard either be directly attached to the verb 言われる? Cause that’s my main complaint.
~~偶然言われる
and
~~十分言われる
don’t sound right to me. It doesn’t sound like natural Japanese, only like something someone writing a sentence in Japanese who doesn’t have a full grasp of the language would write.
I don’t know how else to explain it, but it would make more sense to say
“十分聞く” vs “十分言われる”
or
“偶然聞く” vs “偶然言われる”
as it would be “I’ve heard enough” or “I heard by coincidence” as opposed to “I was told enough” or “I was told by coincidence” (literally “I was said to enough/by coincidence”)

You have to remember that 言われる is passive form and something that is “done to” the speaker. How does someone “coincidentally” have something said to them?

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#9

Hey, thanks for the response, I think you understand best what I was trying to convey in my initial post. After reading through everything in here I think it is just that the expected contrast here is more nuanced that what I had figured, and is likely referencing the other persons expectations. Which I will say I find a bit odd to use as an example in a JLPT exam when nothing other than the one sentence is provided as context.

I’m sure you already get what I mean but just for anyone else that comes along I expect the most generalized contrasting viewpoint to the one assumed. So in my example “Even if you shoot me, I won’t bleed” This is a presumed contrast, we don’t need to know any context, but if you were to switch it around as Flashbang suggested, yes it could still absolutely be contrastive but it would require prior context, especially to be used as a test question imo. So in the original question I posted, I would think the presumed assumption for most people would be more info, more quickly = harder to remember. So its just weird they use it in the way they do here, even though I do think logically it makes perfect sense if part of a greater context and the person you are speaking to thinks they are helping by listing everything.

I also don’t really see why 十分 is on its face wrong either as you said, I seemingly see lots of uses of 十分 adverbially without the に and it would make the sentence more on its face contrastive. Maybe its unnatural for some reason, but I feel like that’s a bit too much for a simple N3 question. This was pretty much the only question that confused me and after reading everyone’s thoughts I have to say I am still not too fond of the question.

I appreciate the discussion here, I will continue following it trying to see what more I can learn. In the end language is very fluid so It’s valuable to see many peoples natural impressions of a question.

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#10

Mmm, not sure, but how about this example (LN):

「学園長に散々言われました。もうやりませんって」
School principal already chewed me out over this. Ok, ok I’m not going to do it again.

Wouldn’t 十分言われた work in a similar meaning to 散々言われた?
Maybe it could work in the meaning of “you’ve insulted me enough, this conversation is over”?

I’m not saying that these specific adverbs make sense in this specific test sentence, but just that adverbs in general sometimes omit に directly before verbs (and also in other cases).

#11

I mean I guess? I understand the idea that the に particle following adverbs can be dropped, as many particles tend to be in casual speech, but no I don’t think 十分 works here.
散々 has a very strong negative connotation. Most of its translations are along the lines of “severely, harshly, terribly”, while 十分 tends to carry a more positive connotation, “Satisfactory, Plenty, Perfectly, Well”.
It would probably work as a construction in general, I could see someone using 十分言われた to mean that they’d been told something “to sufficiency”, but why would you not use other verbs instead, like 教えてもらう or 説明された？
I’m not saying it’s an impossible construction, it clearly can work, I just don’t think it’s something a native speaker would say, and thus not an answer I would consider on the test.
If you found an example of someone saying 「十分言われた」i’d have to eat my words, but I don’t think it would be an easy (nor common) construction to find, as opposed to 「一度に言われた」