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Ok, so I've been reading よつばと recently, and I've been seeing a suffix coming up that I cannot seem to find a meaning for. It's not in any dictionary, and I'm not sure if it's a name suffix, or some obscure grammatical marker I've never heard before. Here's an example:


What does the ち after おばあちゃん indicate? Is it actually doing something in the sentence, or is it a soft version of ちゃん? That's my hypothesis, but I'd like confirmation.

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1 Answer 1

It's short for の家{うち}.

You will normally see the abbreviation んち:

(1a) 俺の家に来い。
(1b) 俺んちに来い。
(2a) お前の家に行きたいなぁ。
(2b) お前んちに行きたいなぁ。

But in cases where there is already an ん before the abbreviation (like おばあちゃん ends in ん in this case) we just see :

(3a) タモリさんの家に行きたい。
(3b) タモリさんちに行きたい。
(4a) 明日麻美ちゃんの家に行く。
(4b) 明日麻美ちゃんちに行く。

So your sentences means:


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OH MY GOD, that clears up so much of the dialogue in the manga. The closest I got in a dictionary was ちゃんちゃん, so I incorrectly assumed it was a shortening of that. Do you know why this particular phrase has a contraction, though? –  KingPumpkin Apr 29 at 21:10
Haha, glad I could help :) No, I'm afraid I don't why this particular phrase has a contraction. Try saying 俺の家{うち} a few times fast though - it pretty naturally slurs to 俺んち :/ –  Ash Apr 29 at 21:26
The phrase was in 日本語俗語辞書 (Japanese slang dic) by the way so you might use that the next time your regular dictionaries fail you. It was in wikitonary too which even mentions 「ん」の後では「ち」のみ. You were unlucky in this case with it being just ち though; pretty impossible to look up x) –  Ash Apr 29 at 21:29
Exactly. My dictionary is pretty good, so I think it'd probably have んち, but just looking up ち, I of course got blood (血). Also, I'll be sure to check out that slang dictionary. Looks really cool! And yes, I can totally see why の家 is hard to say. –  KingPumpkin Apr 29 at 22:15

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