Thanks for the feedback, hope you are enjoying the book!
On page 9, the cat and boy are looking at each other after they both stop crying and the cat says:
“きみもおうちわかんないんらね”
Let me break it down as best as my Duolingo, Level 4 Wanikani education will allow
- きみ (you) + も (too) = you also
- おうち = home
- わかんない.has been polluted by baby cat talk
-
- Comes from 分かる
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- To negate, replace the う sound with an あ sound and add ない, therefore 分からない
- んら I can’t quite penetrate
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- Maybe he means なら, which Tim Kae tells me is for contextual conditional statements
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- I like 2OC3aOdKgwSGlxfz’s take that it is んだ
- ね is a particle that means your looking for confirmation like, “you know”, or “isn’t it”. Lots more about it here.
Put it all together, and with the explanatory tone, it means something like “You don’t know where my your home is either,huh”.
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Not really sure, but my best guess is:
きみも おうち わからない んだ ね
where
んだ = contraction of のだ, also known as “explanatory tone”
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I read it as, “You don’t know where your home is either, huh?”
Considering he’s also crying and on the ground.
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Yeah, this was the translation I ended up with, too. Made sense to me 
Just started today, took me like half an hour to read, which is sad. Hopefully I will be able to pick up pace as I read.
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Don‘t worry, one chapter takes me around half an hour, too 
or did those three chapters took you only half an hour? then you are faster then me 
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Yeah, first chapter is definitely harder, especially getting used to the way チー speaks. Hang in there and don’t forget the vocab sheet which will save you looking up words, and also help with words that are difficult to look up as they have been written in baby speak.
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It took me yesterday to finish chapter 1…
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I’m super late, and I don’t know if this has been asked before in the tons of responses already(if so, apologies).
On page 14, top right, it starts with こんなに ちいさくちゃ ひとり。。。。
while I know ちいさくて means small, what significance does the ちゃ have?
Edit : Also, I finally finished Ch.2 and 3. This is much more hillarious than I thought it would be.
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It has! Ctrl+F is super useful for future reference. But yeah, in this case, ちゃ is an abbreviation of ては.
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I see. Thanks a lot 
Thank you for that. Okay, so ちゃ is ては, but what is ては? Is it the conjunctive te-form followed by the topic particle? I didn’t know that was possible!
Oh, and nice tip about Ctrl+F! Very nice! Thank you!
oh… that’s so 4 post ago…
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And from lots of posts ago too! Plus a reply from the one and only Belthazar as well!
This is what I wrote then…
こんなに - so, like that, in this way
小さくちゃ - 小さい is “small”, the conjunctive form is 小さくて. If you add a は it turns out as ちいさくちゃ, but I don’t know if that is what is happening here.
This is how Belthazar replied…
ちゃ is an abbreviation of ては. Seems to me like this is basically the ～てはいけない construction with an extra clause in the middle.
I then said…
Thank you so much! I’ll get back and study that right now.
I did study it. I didn’t get it. I still don’t. I was too polite to mention it again. When it came up in the thread again just now I completely forgot I’d once been over this very same sentence. But I’m still lost. But, as you guys know, Japanese is tough for me. The moment I learn one thing, I forget everything else. Study one kanji, the rest are gone. Study one grammar point, it instantly becomes the only one I know! I know it must drive you nuts. It certainly drives me nuts. Sorry.
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Let’s look at it from (maybe) another angle, and also break it up a little.
「こんなに小さくちゃひとりじゃ生きていけないわよね。」
ちゃ is just a spoken way of saying ては. Kind of like when someone says “should of” in place of “should have”, it’s just a lazier way of speaking.
「こんなに小さくてはひとりじゃ生きていけないわよね。」
Let’s split the sentence here and get the easy first part out of the way.
「こんなに小さくては」
As mentioned in another post above, 小さくて is the conjuntive form of 小さい. Here, it connects 小さい with は (I think).
「こんなに小さい」
“So small”
「ては」
This is a particle combination, combining the て form of a verb with the particle は. It can be used to mean “Because [part before ては] is the situation, [part after ては] will be the result.” (This grammar point will be on the test at the end of the week.)
“Because Chii is so small, then the result will be ひとりじゃ生きていけないわよね。”
Further reading: Maggie Sensei: How to use ては / では ( = tewa / dewa)
Scroll down to “3) If /because ~ + unfavorable result / to give one’s negative comments or express one’s negative opinion towards the topics.”
According to this bit from Maggie Sensei, the result portion is unfavorable. So, it probably is not going to translate to “Because Chii is so small, a bunch of people will all want to adopt her and she’ll live happily ever after.”
We’ve covered the situation (being “so small”). Now let’s look at the result.
「ひとりじゃ生きていけないわよね。」
Just as ては can be spoken as ちゃ, we also have that では can be spoken as じゃ.
「ひとりでは生きていけないわよね。」
Since a noun cannot conjugate into a て form, で is used in では.
Let’s try applying the “if/because situation, then (unfavorable) result” again. (We’ll ignore the ending partilces わよね for now.)
「If ひとり, then 生きていけない。」
ひとり is alone.
Note: ひとりで means “by oneself”. I don’t know if there is a difference in meaning between 「ひとり + では」 and 「ひとりで + は」.
「If (Chii is) alone, then 生きていけない。」
For a moment, let’s put it all together so far.
「Because (Chii is) so small, if (Chii is) alone then 生きていけない。」
The final main piece to tackle is the result.
「生きていけない」
According to Jisho, 生きていく is an expression meaning “to subsist; to keep on living”. By the way, this is basically 「生きて行く」, but you typically don’t use the kanji for いく here.
Note: Think of the phrase when leaving the house in the morning: 行ってきます. It means “to go and (then) return”. 生きていく (or politely as 生きていきます) is “to live and (then) go”, which can be taken as “to keep on living”. (I think.)
The negative conjugation of 行く is 行かない. The potential conjugation is 行ける. The negative potential is 行けない, or as written here いけない.
Here is the expression with each of these conjugations:
- 生きていく = to keep on living
- 生きていかない = to not keep on living
- 生きていける = to be able to keep on living
- 生きていけない = to not be able to keep on living
Bringing it together:
「こんなに小さくちゃひとりじゃ生きていけないわよね。」
“Because (Chii is) so small, if (she is) alone, (she) will not be able to keep on livingわよね。”
わ is a feminine softening of the sentence, and よね is like “isn’t that right?” (seeking agreement). So perhaps (Englishized):
“Since Chii is so small, don’t you think she won’t be able to survive by herself?”
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I don’t know what to say! I am at a total loss for words!
What a post! What a magnificent work of art!
I kid you not, if there were an award for “best post in a bookclub thread, 2019” your prize would already be in the bag.
This is amazing!
And thank you!
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Writing it required me to read up on things I’ve learned and forgotten, as well as learn some new things, so I enjoyed it =D
I feel like I need to become more familiar with ては and では (as well as ちゃ and じゃ), so I can recognize their usage on the spot. Granted, this is just one usage here, and there are other usages as well to learn (as seen on the Maggie Sensei article).
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