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> 初めて聞いた時はどうしてもうまく理解できなかった

What meaning does どうしても add?
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2022-07-23T19:49:37.497
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question
meaning adverbs
初めて聞いた時はどうしてもうまく理解できなかった - What is どうしても contributing?
Adverbs are hard. They are hard to learn, hard to explain, and hard to
translate into another language.

どうしても has several different usages. The one you are asking about is this
[デジタル大辞泉（小学館）](https://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/word/%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E3%81%97%E3%81%A6%E3%82%82/):

> どう努力してみても。どんな径路をたどっても。「―納得できない」「駅までは―一時間はかかる」「―話題がそこにいく」

Simply put, if you understand it as "whatever I/you/someone do/does/did",
"whatever method I/you/someone try/tries/tried", "no matter how I/you/someone
try/tried/tries" you should be able to get a handle on the meaning of the
sentence. But in real life, you don't always have to translate or understand
it as such. Most of the time adverbs like "just" or "simply" would render the
sentence just fine.

> 初めて聞いた時はどうしてもうまく理解できなかった  
>  When (I) first heard (about/of) (it), **not matter how (I) tried** (I)
> couldn't understand (it) well.  
>  When (I) first heard (about/of) (it), (I) **simply/just** couldn't
> understand (it) well.

It's also worth mentioning that a closely related word is
[どうも](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E3%81%A9%E3%81%86%E3%82%82):

> no matter how, not at all (used with a negative verb)  
>  どうも理解できない。  
>  No matter how, I can't understand it. → I just can't understand it.
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2022-07-23T20:53:16.047
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answer