Cat Instagram sentences

Japanese Language Questions
1

Hi, I’m Eli and sometimes I go on Instagram and find Japanese accounts that post their cats. This is not only to see cat pictures that are wonderful and nice, but also to see if I can tell what they’re saying (and to get a sneak peak at some kanji I may learn in the future :eyes:). And before you ask, I have a pretty strong understanding of grammar, already. However, seeing as this is a very casual setting, I come across a lot of things that are hard to translate. This is one of those times.

You may find the cute cat pic and sentence(s) in question here.

I haven’t even gotten past the first sentence, so I’ll only focus on that, and my progress with it thus far.

お鼻くちょ付いてふと思ったチトっ！

Right off the bat, “お鼻くちょ” was giving me trouble. 鼻 is nose, and I’m assuming that お is honorific. くちょ, however, was giving me trouble. I couldn’t find any vocabulary word on Wanikani with that reading, and jisho didn’t bring me anything either. But then I found 鼻糞 (はなくそ) – snot. So maybe ちょ is just some cute/casual realization of そ here. I don’t think I see any snot in the picture… maybe that small bit of white is what it’s referring to – if this お鼻くちょ is indeed referring to snot anyways.

Then we have 付いて, which is clearly the te form of 付く, which is a bit of a vague verb, to say the least.

I’m assuming ふと is the adverb, meaning these words right here.

思った is the -ta/simple past version of 思う, to think.

I haven’t the slightest clue what that チトっ at the end could mean. Maybe it’s what was 思う’d? Like, “I suddenly thought, ‘チトっ!’”?

So I guess what I could sort of piece togehter here is like, "The snot stuck (to something) and I thought “chito~!” ?

Any help here? :smile:

2

I don’t know if it’s got anything to do with anything, but Chito is also the name of a cat in “Flying Witch”:

Hmm… I’ve read some of the comments, and it seems people thought it was snot, but it’s not, so she felt the need to clarify that I think.

But I’m just a beginner, so maybe someone else can help you out more. ^^;

3

I think this is 鼻くちょ:

hanakucho

I don’t know if this is cat specific or not, but when you google image search 鼻くちょ, it is mainly cats…

I asked a Japanese native, but she hasn’t responded yet…

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4

I don’t think this is the case, that would be English grammar, but in Japanese what “someone” is thinking is written before と思う.

5

Yes, I forgot about the quotative と. I don’t suppose that’s one of the many dropped particles isn’t it? Lol EDIT: Wait no, brainfart. 思うwould still have to go after it.

6

So 鼻くちょ specifically means… kitty snot?

*follows thread with interest

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7

I think maybe it refers to small specks of dried snot? Very weird. I can find instances of it on Twitter and in Google images, but absolutely no dictionary is proving fruitful. Once we get to the bottom of this maybe we oughta add it to Wiktionary or something lol.

8

Is is possible that 付いてふ is a typo? Would it make more sense as 付いてる (contraction of 付いている)?

Also, jisho.org shows ちっと (alternate form: ちと) as meaning “a little bit”.

So, “A little bit that I thought was cat snot stuck on him/her.”
?

9

付いてる does make a whole lot more sense, which lends that と to be the quotative for 思う. The placement of チトっ just seems weird to me though.

10

I was seeing it as 「お鼻くちょ付いてふと思った」being a long clause modifying チトっ, which definitely isn’t how I, as a native English speaker, would first think to write it, but :woman_shrugging: (It still could be wrong, but I feel pretty confident)

11

I tried to see it that way too. Maybe the captioner is comparing their cat to the character @BlueberryPear mentioned. When I perused the search チトっ on Twitter and looked at media there was another little anime girl character that popped up a lot too.

12

My girlfriend said she’s never seen anyone write like this, so I wouldn’t put too much energy into trying to determine if there are any “words” you can use elsewhere. It’s either a niche inside-dialect or just a unique weirdo. Obviously she can grasp the general idea, which I believe you’ve all managed to as well, but things like using the ふ instead of る, and チトっ, etc, she’s never seen that.

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13

I ran this sentence through Google Translate and got this:

I thought I caught your nose and suddenly thought!

I’m guessing it’s a “got your nose” thing.

14

'>_>

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15

Of course, my goal here is to understand, not imitate. Besides, I mainly communicate over the internet, so who knows… Maybe I’ll run into this a lot. :stuck_out_tongue:

16

The responses I got from my Japanese friends (purely about 鼻くちょ) were:
“I think it means booger” and
“It’s used for babies/kids and maybe pets. The original word is 鼻くそ. It means booger”

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17

maybe チト is the name of the cat in the picture?

18

Nope, cat’s name is サスケ.

19

And just to clarify to anyone who wasn’t sure why I made that face (since I can’t tell if you’re joking)

Beyond the “got your nose” game being something Japanese people won’t get because it’s not something they do with kids, it’s recommended that you don’t try to do it because the hand configuration is considered vulgar in Japan.

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20

Oh…whoops