What is the grammatical rule for ついちゃ? I really seem to be having a hard time properly finding explanations for this grammatical construction. Can anyone please help ? (Ps I want an explanation so I’m not sure if this goes in R/Translation or not)

7 comments

1. It’s ては pushed together. うそをついてはダメ->うそをついちゃだめ

   Explanation:

   https://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/colloquial-contractions.html#:~:text=These%20are%20contractions%20of%20the,the%20te%20form%20of%20taberu.

   ETA: you can hear it a lot in this song: https://youtu.be/_ZQgeokMtos

2. ついちゃ comes from to lie is うそをつく. So the non contracted version would be うそをついては、だめ then ついては is contracted to ついちゃ this is a very common conversation technique, for example, それ、言っちゃだめよ！ don’t say that!!

3. Are you familiar with the ‘must do X’ construct in Japanese?

   E.g. 食べなくてはいけない = I have to eat

   The way to make this more casual would be 食べなくちゃ. This would be similar to saying ‘I gotta eat’.

   It is a shortened form of the first grammatical construct.

   To tell a lie is うそをつく.

   As we learned above, to say I have to tell a lie is うそをつかなくてはいけない or shortened to うそをつかなくちゃ.

   You might notice that this is using the negative form of つく (and also used the negative form of たべる).

   The construct is basically a double negative yo express must do.

   So if we use the negative form to express that we must do something, we use the opposite – the positive form – to express that we must NOT do something.

   And in this case, it’s been shortened using the same ちゃ construct as is used above.

   The だめ is often used in other constructs or added to this to convey the same meaning or add emphasis.

   Hope this helps.

4. Its not ついちゃ. The actual construction is ~ちゃだめ, and it means “you mustn’t do~”.

   The way you conjugate it is, you remove the て or で of a verb in its -te form and add the ~ちゃだめ or ~じゃだめ respectively.

   You can find a couple examples here:
   https://jlptsensei.com/learn-japanese-grammar/%E3%81%A1%E3%82%83%E3%81%84%E3%81%91%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84-%E3%81%98%E3%82%83%E3%81%84%E3%81%91%E3%81%AA%E3%81%84-cha-ikenai-ja-dame/

5. It’s a contracted form of ては (て-ending plus a topic particle は), related to the very casual verb ちゃう forms. Neither of these are things you would use in formal speech, but they show up often in everyday conversations. You get used to them.

   They’re especially common as a way of emphasizing a basic negative, like 見っちゃダメ! (Don’t look!) or similar phrases.

6. I feel like it’s the more casual / affectionate form of ~たら, following the same grammar rules

7. @OP, what website/app is this? u/Altruistic-Lead-834