On the use of katakana and チクる

Question

The full sentence is:

気にしないでコレ全然アレじゃねぇから 間違ってもチクんじゃねーぞ

And I'm having trouble deciphering those katakana, コレ and アレ are probably a way to emphasize これ and あれ, but what about チク? Is it replacing a kanji?

Answer 1

This is my first time posting here. I hope it's helpful. Here's my understanding of the sentence. I think it's right. But I'm not a native speaker or anything. Yes the katakana is just to emphasize, and チクる is tattle/rat on. Here's a breakdown:

気にしないで don't worry about it

コレ全然アレじゃねぇ (これは全然あれじゃない） 'this' is not 'that'(other thing) at all. So he's saying 'this isn't what you think it is'

から so

間違っても in this case it kind of means 'no matter what', or 'you'd better (not). Technically it's the same as どんなことがあっても or 絶対に. If you can stretch your imagination a bit, it's like 'don't do (whatever), not even by mistake'

チクんじゃねーぞ I'd say in this case 'don't rat on me' or 'keep your mouth shut' would be appropriate.

OK. Let's put it together, and make it sound like somewhat natural English (haha).

"Don't worry about it. This totally isn't what you think. So you better keep your mouth shut about it!"

Hope that makes sense.

Answer 2

コレ and アレ are, as you suspect, replacements for これ and あれ. The use of katakana just gives it kind of a rougher feel.

チクる, as snailplane points out, is a slang word that means "tattling" or "ratting someone out." Etymologically it comes from ちくん, ちくちく, or ちくり. This is a 擬態語 (onomatopoeia) referring to a kind of pricking pain (like from a needle). I cannot find a kanji for this, but many onomatopoeia words don't have kanji at all.

The link that snailplane provided also suggests that it might come from an inversion of 口 (くち). If that's the case I don't think we can say it's replacing kanji either.

Ultimately it's just following the established pattern of slang words that those darn kids use being a mix of katakana and hiragana, especially popular with characterizations of foreign accents or yakuza and yankee type characters.