Japanese Contracted Speech: Chau, Toku, Nakya, and More

The everyday contractions at a glance

The table below is the whole map: each contraction you will hear daily, the full form behind it, its meaning, and its register. Casual means plain-form conversation with friends and family. Polite means the contraction can sit inside a sentence that ends in masu or desu without sounding rude. Formal means a speech, a written report, or an apology to a customer, where full forms are expected. Standard Tokyo speech is described here; Kansai and other regions have their own reductions, which vary by city and generation.

Chau and jau: te shimau said fast

Te shimau adds a sense of completion or regret to a verb, and in speech it becomes chau. The rule follows the te form: a verb whose te form ends in te takes chau, and one whose te form ends in de takes jau. Tabete shimau becomes tabechau; yonde shimau becomes yonjau. Chau then conjugates like an ordinary godan verb, so the past is chatta, the polite form is chaimasu, and the polite past is chaimashita. That last one is the form you will use most at work: wasurechaimashita, I forgot, sounds honest and a little apologetic without being formal.

The contraction is safe in polite conversation, but not everywhere: a formal apology to a customer or a line in a written report keeps te shimaimashita. In casual speech the past form chatta carries most of the feeling, and okurechatta for I ended up late or wasurechatta for I forgot are heard dozens of times a day. Listen for a small chi sound in the middle of a verb; that is usually chau at work.

Toku and teru: te oku and te iru

Te oku means doing something in advance or leaving it as it is, and in speech the e of te and the o of oku merge into toku. Yoyaku shite oku becomes yoyaku shitoku, and it conjugates normally: shitokimasu, shitoita, shitoite. Katte oite, a request to buy something ahead of time, becomes kattoite. After a te form ending in de the contraction is doku: yonde oku becomes yondoku. Both are fine in polite speech, and shitokimasu is a very normal way to tell a colleague you will handle something beforehand.

Te iru loses its i in nearly all spoken Japanese, giving teru, temasu, temashita. Shitte imasu becomes shittemasu, sunde imasu becomes sundemasu, and the meaning does not change. This is the most common contraction in the language and the one to adopt first, because the full te imasu can sound slightly careful in a relaxed office conversation. In writing and formal speech, the i comes back.

Cha and ja: te wa and de wa

Te wa, the form behind prohibitions such as tabete wa ikemasen, contracts to cha, and de wa contracts to ja. Tabete wa ikemasen becomes tabecha ikemasen; nonde wa dame becomes nonja dame. The cha form is casual and relaxed polite: a parent, a teacher, or a friend will say it, and tabecha ikemasen is fine in ordinary polite conversation, but a sign or a formal instruction keeps te wa. Cha with dame is purely casual.

The same de wa to ja change appears in two places learners rarely connect. Gakusei de wa arimasen becomes gakusei ja arimasen, which is fully standard polite Japanese and is what most speakers actually say. And de wa as a sentence opener meaning well then becomes ja, as in ja, hajimemashō. Both are so ordinary that de wa can sound stiff in speech; keep it for formal announcements and use ja everywhere else.

Nakya and nakucha: must, in a hurry

Obligation in Japanese is built on a double negative: nakereba narimasen, if I do not do it, it will not do. In speech nakereba shrinks to nakya, and its twin nakute wa shrinks to nakucha. Ikanakereba narimasen becomes ikanakya narimasen, and in casual speech the second half is dropped entirely: ikanakya on its own means I have to go, and mō kaeranakya means I have to get home now. The listener supplies the missing narimasen without thinking.

Register matters here. Nakya ikemasen and nakya narimasen with the polite ending are relaxed polite: fine with colleagues, slightly informal with a manager. Nakya and nakucha standing alone are casual and sound abrupt in a masu conversation. If you are speaking politely, say the full nakereba narimasen or attach the polite ending to nakya; never close a polite sentence with a bare nakya.

A friend who hears mō kaeranakya will reply with something like sō? ki o tsukete, and a colleague who hears mō kaeranakya ikemasen will say otsukaresama deshita. Practise both exchanges as pairs so the reply arrives with the line, and notice that the reply itself is usually contracted too.

Tte and n da: quoting and explaining

To iu, the pattern for naming and quoting, contracts to tte. Tanaka-san to iu hito becomes Tanaka-san tte hito, a person called Tanaka. Quoting what someone said also shrinks: yasumi da to itte imashita becomes yasumi datte, they said it is a day off, with the whole verb of saying disappearing. Tte is mostly casual, but one form has crossed into polite conversation: tte nan desu ka, what does that mean, is a normal way to ask about a word even in a masu conversation.

No da and no desu, the explanatory ending, become n da and n desu in nearly all speech. Dō shita no desu ka is rare aloud; dō shita n desu ka is what people say. N desu is fully polite, so adopt it immediately. It stacks with the others: ame ga futte iru no desu becomes ame ga futteru n desu, two contractions in one short phrase, which is exactly why real speech sounds so much shorter than the textbook.

Wakannai and the casual n

In casual Tokyo speech, ra before nai often collapses into a small n. Wakaranai becomes wakannai, tsumaranai becomes tsumannai, and the same collapse hits the te iru forms of casual questions: nani o shite iru no becomes nani shiten no. These are the contractions that make a drama seem faster than it is. They are strictly casual. Wakarimasen never becomes anything shorter, and a wakannai in a polite conversation sounds like a child or a close friend, so use these only with people you already speak to in plain form.

Which contractions survive a masu sentence

The safest test is the ending. If the contraction sits in the middle of a sentence and the ending is still masu or desu, most forms above are acceptable in ordinary polite conversation. If the contraction replaces the ending, so that the sentence stops at nakya, datte, or chatta, it is casual. A shop assistant or a colleague says shittemasu and shitokimasu all day, but does not end a sentence to a customer with nakya.

• Fine in a masu sentence: tabechaimashita, yoyaku shitokimasu, shittemasu, ja arimasen, dō shita n desu ka, tte nan desu ka.
• Relaxed polite, fine with colleagues, careful with managers or customers: nakya ikemasen, tabecha ikemasen, tte hito.
• Casual only: ikanakya on its own, nakucha on its own, datte as a quote, cha dame, wakannai, tsumannai, shiten no.
• Formal speech and writing: keep every full form, including te imasu, de wa arimasen, and nakereba narimasen.
• Never mix a casual-only form with a polite ending, such as wakannai desu; the register clash is what sounds wrong, not the contraction.

A listening drill for contracted speech

Hearing contractions is the first skill, because the short form arrives faster than you can expand it. Take a two-minute scene of natural dialogue, a drama, a vlog, or a recording of your own practice, and work through it in four passes: once for meaning, once tallying every contraction against the table above, once pausing to expand and re-contract each one aloud, and once shadowing at full speed with the contractions exactly where the speaker put them.

• Pass one: listen for meaning and do not stop.
• Pass two: tally every chau, toku, teru, ja, nakya, tte, and n da you hear against the table.
• Pass three: pause on each, expand it aloud to the full form, then contract it again.
• Pass four: shadow the scene at natural speed, matching every contraction.
• Finish by writing one polite sentence and one casual sentence using the contraction you heard most.

How to check your own contractions

Record yourself saying the full form and the contraction of five pairs, then listen for two things. First, timing: tabechaimashita should be one smooth word, not tabe-chai-mashita with a gap where shimai used to be. Second, register: does the ending match the middle? A contraction that sounds too loose is nearly always a casual-only form inside a polite sentence. Compare against a native recording, and use the pronunciation coaching from your AI Sensei in the 3D classroom to catch the pairs where your chau still sounds like two syllables.

• Record five full and contracted pairs in one take and listen for gaps inside the contraction.
• Say each contraction inside a full sentence, then check that the ending matches its register.
• Read your session report and mark every line where a casual-only form sat inside a masu sentence.
• Re-record only the pairs that failed, then move on; the goal is fluency, not a perfect list.