Hi,
I was wondering if anyone could help me figuring out the last part of this sentence:
簡単そうだけど、実際にやってみると意外と難しい
I already know this phrase means “It seems easy, but if you actually try and do it, it’s surprisingly hard.” Now, the part I struggle with is the very last part, 意外と難しい .
I’m not sure what role the particle “と” means here. The first one clearly is a conditional if-then. My best bet would be to think about it as a conjunction, as in “it’s unexpected and hard”, but I personally would have translated this probably with に instead, as in “unexpectedly hard”. So I feel like I’m missing something here?
Thanks in advance,
2 comments
“意外と” and “意外に” are both adverbial forms of the NA adjective 意外.
See [Jisho](https://jisho.org/word/%E6%84%8F%E5%A4%96): “Na-adjective (keiyodoshi), Adverb taking the ‘to’ particle”
See the answer in [this stack exchange article](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/55537/a-bit-confused-with-%E3%81%A8-in-%E3%81%B2%E3%82%87%E3%81%A3%E3%81%93%E3%82%8A%E3%81%A8) for the meaning of と being added to adverbs. The article links to other articles explaining it. Basically the と just gives some additional slight emphasis to the adverb. Often you can omit the と without changing the meaning (much).
A lot (most?) of the adverbs (but not all) that can take と are onomatopoeic or mimetic and I’ve seen the explanation that the と is just the quotation particle – effectively saying “that’s how it is said”. *I’ve no idea if this is true or not though*. It makes sense for onomatopoeia, especially those that mimic real sounds.