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I am organizing an event and posted a flyer on a famous SNS.

Someone commented on it saying: イベント立てちゃいなよ

From the context I guess it is advising me to create an event (SNS feature), am I mistaken?

QUESTION: What are the different grammatical parts in 立てちゃいなよ ?

Nicolas Raoul
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2 Answers2

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立てちゃいなよ is the contracted form of 立ててしまいなよ. Another, mascline, contraction is 立てちまいなよ. The components of 立ててしまいなよ are:

tate-te (verb in a certain form) simaw- (another verb) -i- (epenthetic vowel) na (affix) yo (sentence-final particle)

  • 'Tate-' usually means 'to stand something up' or 'establish', but is used slangishly in this context 'to initiate'.

  • 'Simaw-' as a main verb means 'to pack something up and put it away', but here, it is used with an auxiliary meaning that derives from that, namely 'to have something done', often, but not necessarily, with the connotation of 'without much consideration' or 'with a negative result'.

ケーキを食べた 'I ate the cake.'

ケーキを食べてしまった 'I ate up the cake without much consideration.'

  • 'I' is a vowel that is inserted by default in order to avoid consecutive consonants that are not allowed in Japanese phonology.

  • This usage of 'na' means suggestion, and unlike imperatives, it is suggested from the viewpoint of the sake of the addressee. To take some forms that Derek mentions for comparison:

ケーキを食べろ/食べなさい 'Eat the cake!' [Neutral about for whose sake or what reason]

ケーキを食べな 'I suggest you eat the cake (for your own sake)'

ケーキを食べて(ほしい) 'I want you to eat the cake (for my sake)'

  • 'Yo' is called a sentence-final partical, often contrasted with 'ne'.

'Yo' is used to tell/suggest something that the addressee is not expected to have in mind.

'Ne' is used to say something that the addressee is expected to know and agree with the addressor.

ケーキを食べたよ 'You know what? I ate the cake.'

ケーキを食べたね 'You ate the cake, didn't you?'

So the sentence イベント立てちゃいなよ means, 'I suggest that you just start out an event without worrying much about its outcomes'.

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Slightly less informally, we have:

イベントを立てちゃってね。

The 立てちゃって of course comes from 立てちゃう, a spoken version of 立ててしまう, so I'm guessing the な in 立てちゃいな is what's confusing. Unlike the prohibition な, which attaches to the dictionary form of the verb (するな, 食べるな), this な attaches to the ます stem to form an informal command. It's friendlier than the blunt しろ-type of command (食べろ, 行け, etc), but it's only appropriate for informal situations (which is why I substituted with the ～てね command form). You often find it with the emphatic よ tacked onto the end. Some more examples:

早く行きなよ（≈行きなさい／行ってね）。 Hurry up and go!

旅行を楽しみなよ（≈楽しんでね）。 Enjoy your trip, OK?

しおり、文句を言わないでご飯をさっさと食べなよ（≈食べなさい）。 Shiori, stop complaining and finish your food!

I seem to recall reading somewhere that this is primarily a feminine expression, but I can't locate that particular statement at the moment, so I'll wait for someone else to clarify that.

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Derek Schaab
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    The な here is actually not an imperative/command. It means suggestion. I.e., 'I suggest you leave shortly', 'I suggest you enjoy your trip', etc. That is why it is milder. Your equation 行きなよ ＝ 行きなさい is not accurate. な is not feminine at all, but ね is feminine (sometimes). –  Jul 08 '11 at 13:18
  • @sawa: I don't think you can make the blanket statement that this use of な is never as an imperative or command. The use changes between command and suggestion based on the tone, which is almost impossible to convey in print. This is why I provided both 行きなさい and 行ってね as possible substitutions for 行きなよ. With such a short sentence, you don't know which is meant unless you actually hear it pronounced. The other two uses I provided can be inferred through the context of the sentence, which is why I only gave one substitution. – Derek Schaab Jul 08 '11 at 13:30
  • @sawa: But in the interest of accuracy, I'll change the = to ≈ to mean "approximately equal to". :) – Derek Schaab Jul 08 '11 at 13:32
  • FWIW, I heard "食べなよ"、 "行きなよ" and things like that a lot, as a mild order or a suggestion, and only from a female friend. Could be a 口癖 too, I don't know. – Axioplase Jul 08 '11 at 13:33
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    @Derek What you are saying is the same as saying that the English sentence "Why don't you hurry up?" is an imperative or a command. –  Jul 08 '11 at 13:43
  • @sawa: Ah, I see: you don't like this answer because of my terminology. Yes, technically "Why don't you hurry up?" is a question, not an imperative. But it's being used like an imperative, because the meaning behind the sentence is "Hurry up." The questioner isn't seeking an answer -- he wants the listener to hurry up, but he's phrasing the imperative as a question. (I'm sure there's a linguistic term for this sort of thing, too.) Same for "Why don't you make like a tree and leave?" Also technically a question, but the true meaning is the imperative, "Get out of here." – Derek Schaab Jul 08 '11 at 13:52
  • @Derek: I think that sawa is making the distinction between an imperative and a suggestion. From my viewpoint, there is little difference between a suggestion and a light imperative, and therefore the claim “な is not an imperative because it is a suggestion” sounds funny, but that is a point of view. – Tsuyoshi Ito Jul 08 '11 at 14:54
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    @Tsuyoshi: Essentially it comes down to subjective definitions. What seems a suggestion to one person may seem an imperative to another. I don't really care what it's called. All I'm trying to do in my answer is show how it's used, not how it's classified. :) – Derek Schaab Jul 08 '11 at 15:20
  • I just wanted to point out that your comment to sawa (2011-07-08 13:52:52) was missing the point of sawa’s comment, because (if I understand it correctly) sawa did not claim that “Why don’t you hurry up?” is a question. – Tsuyoshi Ito Jul 08 '11 at 15:27
  • @Tsuyoshi: Actually, I believe he did have that claim in his original comment, which is why I responded to it, but he removed it in an edit. (And it looks like there's unfortunately no way to check revs on a comment.) – Derek Schaab Jul 08 '11 at 16:01
  • @Tsuyoshi, @Derek I did write question, then removed it for the reason Tsuyoshi mentions. I would have really wanted to use the term 'interrogative' instead, but chose 'question' because people don't seem to like linguistic terms, and then, I removed it to avoid confusion. There is a difference between syntactic forms and its pragmatic effect. But for this case, a suggestion is made for the sake of someone, whereas imperative does not specify for whose sake it is. That is clearly different. –  Jul 08 '11 at 16:35
  • @Derek: Oh, I see. I did not see that comment you are referring to, and that explains why you and I view sawa’s claim differently. – Tsuyoshi Ito Jul 08 '11 at 16:35
  • @user458 The な here is not the same as ね; rather, it's a shortened form of なさい. – Angelos Aug 14 '15 at 17:06