So the other day I was reading the preview chapter of サムライ８八丸伝, the new manga by Masashi Kishimoto who previously created Naruto when I came across a sentence which said "次は趣味いっとこ”. I was really confused about the word いっとこ. The context is that a character is listing off a bunch of wishes to a shooting star, and he says this as he is switching topics to 趣味 related wishes.
I asked a Japanese friend, as well as my Japanese teacher what it means, and they both say in this context いっとこ is the same as the volitional form いこう, but I can’t seem to find any source for that online (not that I’m doubting two separate native speakers). I was wondering if anyone knows where I can read more about this form, or has anything further to add than that? Is it a dialectal thing? Can I use it with verbs other than 行く?
Also as a side note I find it interesting that Japanese use the same metaphor as us for “moving” to the next topic.
It is the volitional, rather the casual shortened version (with the final う dropped). What you’re also missing is the ておく contraction. If you don’t know about the ておく conjugation, you can read about it here: Other uses of the te-form – Learn Japanese
Now, the way いっとこ works is that you start with いう (言う). You make the て form and add おく, you get いっておく. Now, in spoken Japanese, the ておく gets shortened to とく, so now you have いっとく. After that you make the volitional ad you get いっとこう, but it’s the shortened version so you get いっとこ.
Spoken casual Japanese is a treasure trove of shortening and mixing sounds together to make things easier to say, and manga is a good way to see these in action
Edit: If the verb was 行く and not 言う, the same conjugation would turn it into いっとこ as well, but I think it’s 言う and not 行く because I can’t think of a logical way in which you can 行く the 趣味 part, but if someone better at Japanese than me knows better, please correct me. Maybe if it was 趣味に行く, but I dunno , it sounds like a 趣味を言う to me.
Ah OK I understand, thanks! I did know about the ておく and actually it crossed my mind but i threw it out when I was told it’s the same as いこう. My friend who is from Tokyo and read the entire page said it means “go next” so I was thinking they were using 行く in much the same way as we would in Engish say “moving on to the next topic”. It’s possible he was mistaken I guess because “now I’ll talk about hobbies” also makes a lot of sense. Either way I understand the conjugation now at least so thanks for that!
There is an ommited particle between 趣味 and いっとこ, I guess, if that particle were に maybe 行く would make sense in the context. Actually the more I think about it, the more it makes sense . I’m gonna ask a Japanese friend about this when I get the chance.
@rilwal edit: he said he thinks it’s 言う too, especially after I mentioned the shooting star. ¯\(ツ)/¯
I think that in this contex perhaps both 行く and 言う can work as a verb for changing the topic? This would work in english too, as has been mentioned above - “Now let’s move onto…” vs “Now let’s talk about…” - similar meaning.
, it sounds like a 趣味を言う to me.