Page 545 - Basic Japanese

noted. The use of these, like the use of ja for de wa, is common

in polite speech, too.
The plain negative ending -(a)nai is often contracted to -(a)n:

Wakaran desu ne = Wakaranai desu ne ‘I don’t know, you see.’
Wakaran yo = Wakaranai yo ‘I don’t know.’ (The polite negative

ending -masen also ends in -n, as if it were from a form -masena-i.)
The word tte is said to be a contraction of to itte ‘saying thus,’

but it is perhaps best treated as just another particle. The word
has two uses: one is the same as the quoting particle to (or to

itte), the other is the same as the topic particle wa. The gerund
and conditional forms of the copula, de and nara, are also often
used with about the same meaning as wa and tte—singling out a

topic for consideration:

This movie’ll be OK.
Kono eiga nara, ii desu.

Kono eiga de, ii desu.
Kono eiga wa, ii desu.
Kono eiga tte, ii desu.

He said goodbye and left.

Sayōnara tte, itchatta = Sayōnara to itte, itte shimatta.

In addition to tte, some speakers use ttara and tcha—from to
ittara, to itte wa—in a similar fashion, as a sort of lively substitute

for the drab particle wa.
In addition to these and other more-or-less standardized
contractions, some speakers tend to underarticulate many of

their sounds, particularly certain consonants. The expression Sō
desu ne ‘Let me see now’ frequently sounds as if the d were

completely dropped, and the e is also difficult to distinguish: Sō-
s-ne.

iv. Choice of forms