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In casual speech what does ja na mean?

As in this example:

葉人をつかまえたんじゃな

Googling for it only turns up results for じゃない。

rhyaeris
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Jared Moen
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  • Related (duplicate?): http://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/17540/5010 – naruto Nov 11 '15 at 04:22
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    The question still could be improved by letting us know that the OP knows that it's not "jyanai" nor a typo, and OP knows the meaning of "jyanai", and it's not "good bye" in this case. That makes this question more complete. – Andrew T. Nov 11 '15 at 06:54
  • Is 葉人 a male given name? – chocolate Nov 11 '15 at 15:10
  • @JaredMoen: There is a lot that could be done to improve this question. Who is speaking? Are they fictional or real? Do you generally understand what the sentence means before the じゃな? (please put what you know in the question). – jkerian Nov 18 '15 at 15:52
  • Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – jkerian Nov 18 '15 at 15:54
  • ... or maybe you meant to type 「[犯人]{はんにん}をつかまえたんじゃな」？ – chocolate Feb 07 '16 at 13:56

3 Answers3

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Like @himself noted, it does mean 葉人をつかまえたんだな. While some dialects do have this change, more importantly it's used to characterise the speaker as a stereotypical wise old male (usually in anime or otherwise in a fiction).

Enno Shioji
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じゃ = だ in some dialects. So this is probably 葉人をつかまえたんだな.

himself
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I believe the んじゃな in:

葉人をつかまえたんじゃな

Is a localized way to say んだ which in turn is an everyday speech abbreviation of the actual form of のだ where the の carries an explanatory tone of the sentence based on context (i.e. the person is explaining something based on a query from a previous sentence) and the だ represents the positive state of being and in this case is a less formal way of saying です

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Ceiling Gecko
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