い adjectives changed to え ending

Japanese
#1

Hey guys just a quick question about い adjectives. I’ve been watching キヨ。 play through breath of the wild and I find it quite entertaining. I did notice a lot of the time he’ll change the ending of い adjectives like instead of すごい it’ll be すげ. I’ve heard if this one before, and had previously thought it was just another way to say that particular word. But he also does with other ones. Here’s ones I remember so far. (Dunno if the え is actually put on the end or not since there’s no subs)
すごい すげ
危ない 危ねえ
やばい やべぇ

But with other adjectives he doesn’t do it. Like 広い or 怖い, but I have seen him just drop the い for these ones like " こわ！" When he’s being attacked.

So is there a certain rule for these? I know it’s very casual speech, but is it a dialect?
He’ll also say things like あっ、ここあんじゃん？

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#2

That’s a pretty regular pattern, I’m not sure it would be considered a dialect as I’ve heard people from all over Japan use that form.

I’m not sure how far it can be pushed your example of こわい →こわ is interesting that it does not become こわえ probably a phonetic thing having to do with w and vowels.

Your examples are both あい・おい→え

I’m not sure others work that way.

でかい→でけ
ほそい→ほせ

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#3

You’re right I hadn’t noticed the three ending in お and あ are what changed to え. Now my interest is peaked. I’ll keep an ear out for more!

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#4

For dropping the い for some adjectives, I know this is a relatively common thing to do in casual speech.

Here’s an Article I Found on it, and I remember seeing a youtube short as well that I will add if I can ever find it! :sob:

When you drop the い from an adjective like 「高い」→「高っ」、It’s usually an exclamatory phrase, i.e. you see a really expensive dress on sale in a store and go
「うわっ、高っ！」 “Wow, (that’s so) expensive!”
Similarly, 「怖っ」when being attacked is exclaiming that something is scary or causing fear, whether serious or in jest.
Some adjectives aren’t often shortened like this, like 「広い」、but It’s not uncommon to see い adjectives that don’t end in 「しい」 to have their い dropped when used as a casual exclamation.

On the other hand, ーえ ending adjectives seem similar to me, but I don’t have a concrete reason as to why it happens. It doesn’t seem like a dialect to me, but I could be incorrect on that.
I’ve noticed a lot of creators I watch will use 「すげぇ」a lot instead of 「すごい」、so if I had to bet on it I would think it’s a case of using an い adj. as an exclamatory phrase.

Edit:
A quick side-note, in regards to 「ここあんじゃん」、Online Japanese Slang and actual Japanese Speech patters are somewhat different from each other. Not only is online speech typically very casual, a number of shortcuts are often taken in terms of speaking and writing most things.
Things like 「wwww」or 「草」meaning “lol”,
「tskr」、use of exclamatory phrases, and 口癖 from personalities or game characters is common.
Watching online personalities stream/play games is a great way to immerse and hear Japanese spoken, but always remember that a lot of what you’re going to hear will be slang, casual language, and potentially offensive language in polite society.

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#5

Interesting!

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#6

I also found This Question that goes into the /ai/-to-/ee/ change in casual speech regarding やべぇ、わかんね、しらねぇ、and others if you’re interested!

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#7

This is true of English as well

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#8

I recently thought more about this and after revisiting this thread a couple more times I think I may have some more answers from a “linguistic” sense as opposed to just a practical one. If anyone else finds the study of language itself to be a fun topic this may be interesting to you as well.

In Japanese, there are obviously 5 main vowels, あ い え う and お. Between these are two “high vowels”, い and う, two “low vowels”, あ and お, and the remaining “middle vowel”, え.
I say “high vowels” for い and う because of tongue position. When you say a flat い or う in Japanese, your tongue is high in the mouth, almost touching the roof.

These are also vowels you see in “unvoiced vowel” phenomena, where a high vowel sandwiched by 2 unvoiced consonants are also unvoiced. Think how the phrase: 失礼します is spoken as “shtsureisimas” as opposed to “shitsureishimasu”, the “i” in “shitsu” is sandwiched between the unvoiced “sh” and “ts” consonant sounds, thus becoming unvoiced. likewise for “masu”, the “u” is sandwiched between the unvoiced “s” and nothing, and since “nothing” is unvoiced, so is the “u”.

I say all of that to explain this. When initially going over the あい → え casual contraction phenomenon, I had wondered if it was restricted to just this pattern. As Sidgr correctly noticed, however, there was also a おい → え pattern noticed.
I tried to think if there were any more examples of this I’ve heard in casual speech, when I realized I’ve heard “違ぇ” (read ちげぇ) before, which is a あう → え pattern.

That is where it finally dawned on me.

What if it’s not a “あい → え”, “おい → え” or “あう → え” rule, but instead a “low vowel + high vowel → え” rule?
This would make sense as え as a vowel sound has your tongue in the middle of your mouth, as opposed to “lower vowels” like あ and お, so as a “casual contraction” え would mean you didn’t have to move your tongue around as much, increasing the speed at which someone could talk.

I don’t have any proof that this is the “exact” reason why the rule exists, but it makes so much sense to me that I can’t think of what other reason there might be as to why.
I might take this reply and make a whole new thread at some point, but I figured it still related to the original question as there was no real answer as to “why” just that “it happens sometimes”.