Japanese super slang confusion (sentence help)

[lamshopping]

Hi everyone

Through the years, I've learnt to deal with some slang and understand (to an extent), various 'transformations' of normal words. But for comics and such (stuff aimed at a younger audience), the slang is really too much.

eg.. the following dialogue. The backstory is...

A hero climbs a snowy mountain in search of a sacred mirror shard. After an arduous journey, he reaches the mountain top only to find an ogre, holding a fish, deeply engaged in thinking about how to prepare his next meal.

The hero approaches the ogre, and startles the beast. The ogre quickly tucks his precious fish away, turns to face our hero, and the dialogue begins:
(This is exactly as it is printed, besides my english additions of course)

Ogre: あんれ、まあ！騒がしいとおもったら、ニンゲンじゃね か！
珍しいの、一体何しに来ただ？

(a pause)

Ogre: おっ。。。アレか？自分探し！ っちゅ~やつか？

Hero: 違う。

The Hero then explains to the Ogre that he is searching for the mirror shard (through a flashback - no dialogue, just a fade out)

Ogre: その鏡を探しにわざわざこんな所まで。。

Ogre laughs: ガッハッハ！なんじゃあ~、はよ言わんかい！

しかし、よう無事に登れたの、しかも、オラに会うとは 、運がええ...

END

Ok, that is all I THINK is needed. The parts in bold are the parts I don't understand. As expected, the parts in bold don't show up in a dictionary either.

I've been through it a couple of times and still don't understand the full meaning.

Can anyone help? If you need more context, I can definately provide it, but I hope it is clear enough.

Thank you very much.

[Karamuucho]

おっ。。。アレか？自分探し！っちゅ~やつか
Ah... You on, um, whadda-ya-call-it, a journey to find yourself? (Sorry bad translation but I can't think of the English equivalent)

はよ言わんかい！
Why didn't you just say so!

The parts I guess you're having trouble with is stuff like
っちゅ～ is = to って言う
はよ = 早く
言わん = 言わない

Help at all? :)

[lamshopping]

That is major help. Thank you so much.

For っちゅ~, are there any hints that you can provide to understand stuff like this? Is it just a case of getting used to it? Although I can't understand how っていう becomes っちゅ。。。。

And what is that [やつ] part at the end? Just more slang mean-nothings?

Is there a general rule for these kind of things. For example, I learnt way back that the sound え can be the sound of い。
はよ becoming はやい something I guessed but wasn't too sure of. How I arrived at the conclusion however, I still don't know...

Thanks again though. That was very helpful.

[Karamuucho]

やつ→look up 奴

っちゅうis really just って言う, the sounds are similar (passably, lol) so some people shorten it, but hey, there is far worse slang, lol.

はよ→早くis more of a regional dialect thing, to describe in detail would take forever, I guess with these you just have to practice and get used to them, heh

[chickie]

I think Karamuucho-san(エディさん？) is right.
っちゅう must be a shorten form of って言う.

The way ogre speaks is rather provincial and it's funny:blush:

[Cue]

Those slang can be an old man's or country man's dialect that epecially appears in an old stories(like folk tale).

yes, "tte yuu"--> tyu=chu (shortened)

If I may, let me add something to Karamucho's translation.

おっ。。。アレか？自分探し！っちゅ~やつか
Literal: Oh...Is that IT? "Finding yourself"!, or something you may call?

はよ言わんかい！
Literal: You should've told me sooner!

Right, as Karamucho mentioned above, "~chuu" and "Hayo iwan'kai", I think, is a dialect used in western Japan. (I speak Osaka-ben and I actually often say it.)
Also, EE in "運がええ" sounds also Osaka-ben, which means "いい" in standard Japanese or "good" (in this context, "your luck is good" = "you're lucky") in English.

@Karamuucho
So, you understand Osaka-ben, too, eh? :-)

Aww, I missed Chickie-san's post.
Yes, I agree.

[Karamuucho]

バラエティ見ながら学んだ日本語なのでそれはまぁ、関西弁慣れますよねぇ(笑)
Haha in all seriousness though even in Tokyo there are many people that enjoy mixing up the different dialects, I guess it's just another form of slang.

[randomcow]

Often you see Osaka-ben or regional dialects used for "outsiders." This can mean a monster or a robot, if the main story (in hyojungo) revolves around humans, or in the case of a dubbed/subbed western movie often all the black people speak with a regional dialect.

RC

[Glenn]

As for はよ and 早く, the explanation is something like this:

In western Japan [k] can drop when forming adverbs, so はやく→はやう, and then the old [au] to [oo] sound change yields はよう. In the above case it's shortened, which happens in words like そう as in そやな.

On a related note, the old western dialect (if I'm remembering correctly) used to use ございます after adjectives to make them polite, but the adjectives would be made into their adverbial forms first. Also, there would be the "honorable" お prefix added. So, はやい would become はやく and then はやくございます, and finally おはやくございます.

However, as happened a lot in Japanese over the centuries, the [k] disappeared, leaving おはやうございます. Also as happened frequently, [au] became [oo] (this can be seen also from traditional spellings of volitional verbs (書かう→書こう) and in the "seems/like" word よう (from やう)). So the final product became おはようございます, literally "it's early," used for "good morning" or when you see someone for the first time that day. Same with おめでとう (from めでたい) and ありがとう (from ありがたい), though I don't know why it isn't おありがとう.

If any of that seems repetitive, it's because I wrote the related explanation then realized it wasn't necessary, but didn't want to delete it since I had spent so much time typing it up. :blush::p