我在西班牙吃到了好吃的羊肉。
Why is 到 used here in this sentence?
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That’s a great question!
I just put this into our LTL Flexi Classes teaching group and we had a very interesting discussion.
Grammatically this is called a “compliment of result”. If emphasizes the result.
However I find that grammatical explanation not very useful in real life.
For a bit of a rough but I find useful guide
- It’s something positive. In day to day Mandarin verb+到了 is used to talk about something that’s good.
- It often has the meaning of having managed to, achieved something that you wanted.
As a speaker there is rarely a situation where you have to use it. You can speak great Mandarin without using 到了 much. You will hear it and for comprehension purposes pretty much ignore it.
I use it to emphasize that I managed to do something that I wanted to do.
Other examples would be
我买到了我想买的画。
我想到了怎么解决这个问题。
我终于看到了我最想看的电影。
A nice summary of the main grammar structures needed I like is on Basic Chinese Grammar // A Simple Guide To Grammar (With Quiz)
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谢谢。 Can I say then:
我有到了我想有的回答。
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You really should be, but unluckily it doesn’t work with 有 
You can say though
我问到了
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