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I was watching an episode of One Piece, and while studying the transcript, I came across this sentence.

ルフィに　会いてえんなら俺が　教えてやるよ

Ace told the other pirates "If ya wanna meet Luffy, I'll tell ya where he is". In the word 会いてえん, what does the えん　part mean? Is it some sort of grammar construct? Is it commonly used in colloquial Japanese? Thanks guys!

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The ～え is the casual form of elongating イ-adjectives into ～え. So in this case it is really 会いたい getting changed into 会いてえ. There may be another topic here about this form, but I can't find it.

The ～ん is just the abbreviated ～の nominalizer. The same as ～んです.

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  • Is there a reason I got two downvotes on this answer?
    – istrasci
    Jul 7, 2014 at 2:14
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    Is this の(ん) really a nominalizer? I'm not sure about the grammatical role of this "の", but I feel this の or ん before なら is simply optional (会いてえのなら／会いてえんなら／会いてえなら all sounds OK).
    – naruto
    Jul 7, 2014 at 3:46
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    「会いたいのなら」は、「会いたいなら」にはない、「会いたいということなら」というニュアンスが含まれると思うので、その「の」は nominalizer だと思います。
    – user1016
    Jul 7, 2014 at 7:43
  • This is a regional phenomenon. I would have expected the region named in a good answer.
    – user4032
    Jul 7, 2014 at 10:52
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    This is def a nominalizer. If you can't let us know what region it's specific to, don't downvote.
    – Jon
    Jul 7, 2014 at 13:38

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