Can someone explain dialogue expressions? Momotarou

Question

Trying to read and translate Momotarou and I don't quite understand these expressions.

So far I have

「うまいももこっちゃこい。

"Delicious peach ... come.

Reference translation: Sweet peach come here.

こっちゃ apparently means as for that thing/matter/fact. So I can kind of understand it just referring to the peach and not having an effect on an English translation. Correct?

にがいももあっちゃいけ。」

Bitter peach ... go."

Reference translation: Bitter peach go away.

あっちゃ is supposedly an expression

stone the crows; blow me down; oops; uh oh; expression of annoyed surprise or shock

But the translated dialogue has no reflection of this. Is it as simple as they just missed an exclamation mark? I might be horribly wrong, but it feels like Japanese dialogue has actual words for one's current emotion whereas English doesn't and it is based solely on the descriptive text before or after the dialogue. Is this something that is actually used in real life speech or only when dialogue is written?

Reference story: http://life.ou.edu/stories/momotarou.html

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 11 '21 at 00:46

4

I would say あっちゃ, こっちゃ here in your example are the contracted pronunciations of あっちへ, こっちへ.

うまいももこっちゃこい。＜＜うまい桃、こっちへ来い。
"Delicious peach, come this way."

にがいももあっちゃいけ。＜＜苦い桃、あっちへ行け。
"Bitter peach, go away."

answered Jan 11 '21 at 00:46

Chocolate

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So I understand correctly -- へ is used in its particle form for direction in your example? – TyCobb Jan 11 '21 at 00:55
Yes, へ is a case particle for direction. こっちへ lit. "to/toward here". – Chocolate Jan 11 '21 at 00:57
Thanks a lot. Just had to make sure because I've been bitten by many assumptions so far on this journey. – TyCobb Jan 11 '21 at 00:59
@TyCobb You should mark this answer as accepted instead. My answer was only a guess. – Eddie Kal Jan 11 '21 at 01:23
@EddieKal As you wish. It was still very helpful in getting me the nouns that the online dictionaries could not determine. – TyCobb Jan 11 '21 at 01:49

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 10 '21 at 22:05

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Here 「こっちゃ」is a diminutive for「こっち」or「こちら」, simply meaning "here".

「あっちゃ」:「あっち」、「あちら」, "over there". Now they should make sense in the context.

answered Jan 10 '21 at 22:05

Eddie Kal

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Oh! I guess I got bit by wrong definitions. Dictionaries kept giving me expression definitions and hinting at different verbs. I thought "here" was implied because I knew it as ここ and it didn't have a に particle that hinted it was a location. – TyCobb Jan 10 '21 at 22:19

Can someone explain dialogue expressions? Momotarou

2 Answers2