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While playing a Japanese mobile horror game, a girl appears with a knife in hand and says the following:

「おとなしくしてなきゃダメじゃない」

I can guess this probably means something like It's a problem if you don't stay quiet, isn't it? but I have problem parsing the てなきゃ: is it from してある (state), as in ドアをあけてあった?

Is the "transitive verb"てある grammar at work here?

1 Answer 1

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してなきゃ is していなければ, and it's the result of these three contractions:

  1. していなければ → してなければ (-inai to -nai / -iru to -ru / -imasu to -masu, discussed here and here)
  2. してなければ → してなけりゃ (-eba to -ya contraction, discussed here and here)
  3. してなけりゃ → してなきゃ (-erya to -ya contraction, discussed here)

~なければだめ, ~ないとだめ, ~なければいけない and so on are very common double-negative construction. These literally mean "if not then it's not good", but usually you can translate them just as "must" or "have to".

じゃない at the end adds "..., okay?", "..., right?" or "..., you know?" feeling to the sentence.

So the whole sentence means "You have to stay calm, okay?", "You must keep quiet, you know?", etc.

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