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I can't find this in any dictionary, but it seems to mean something like picture. Is that right?

I don't have an example sentence, because that word was the whole sentence.

language hacker
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  • What's wrong with this question? – language hacker Aug 15 '11 at 15:43
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    Sentence or it didn't exist. (no I didn't downvote this - I've never downvoted even once in JLU) – Lukman Aug 15 '11 at 15:49
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    Yes, you have a nasty habit of never putting example sentences. – istrasci Aug 15 '11 at 16:03
  • Looking on Google, I don't think example _sentences_ will help... example _pages_, maybe. It has less than 10,000 hits, so it might be very difficult to give an answer... – Zhen Lin Aug 15 '11 at 17:51
  • "That word was the whole sentence"? Was it a blog post title, or a picture caption, or something? If that's the case, a link would help. It's often difficult to translate without context. – Amanda S Aug 17 '11 at 06:32
  • @sawa: You added a [[tag:diminutive]] tag, but how is this question related to [diminutives](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminutive)? If I understand the technical terms correctly, さちゅえい is a (mock) baby-talk, not a diminutive. The same applies to some of the other questions to which you added the [diminutive] tag recently. – Tsuyoshi Ito May 31 '12 at 00:38
  • さちゅえい is contrasted to さつえい, and can be considered the diminutive form of the latter. If you consider the phoneme "ch" which replaces "ts", or more precisely the phonological feature that is added to make the sound change, I think that can be considered a diminutive morpheme. –  May 31 '12 at 01:13
  • @sawa: Baby-talks can be often made by sound changes, so that does not explain that さちゅえい is a diminutive. My understanding is that さつえい and さちゅえい mean the same things. If you want to keep your view in tags, I do not care unless it is my question, but I am afraid that you are simply conflating baby-talks and diminutives. – Tsuyoshi Ito May 31 '12 at 02:50

1 Answers1

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I think it comes from 撮影【さつえい】 where つ becomes ちゅ for some reason (slang?). A bit like おやちゅみなさい.

Seems to me that さちゅえい refers to 撮影会 events. There are many types of 撮影会 but the main ones are for amateur photographers to meet, to take a picture with a character or model, to create publicity with an open photoshoot, or to recruit new models. They are discussed in more detail on Wikipedia.

Louis Waweru
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  • I learned that it's pronounced that way by kids, because they can't pronounce certain letters. – language hacker Aug 17 '11 at 06:11
  • @language you're correct on that one, but just to note that sometimes such "kiddish" spelling is made to entice newbies. – syockit Aug 20 '11 at 03:44
  • Some (if not many) Chinese pronounce it that way. I had a few Chinese friends, and they could not pronounce `つ` very well, and it always came out as `ちゅ`. – istrasci May 30 '12 at 14:51