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今のうちにサインもらっとけとでも言うんスか！？

What I thought he was saying: "Are you saying we should get his signature now while we still can!?"

I was stuck for several days on this sentence having trouble making sense of it, suspecting that there was some contraction I was having trouble with. I suspected that もらっとけ was a contraction of もらっておけ but wasn't sure where else to go from there.

I was also wondering is what is the grammatical meaning of having the form ておけ here, instead of ておこう or something? I've noticed that other questions like this one mention the ておけ form but doesn't really explain why the sentence uses that form specifically.

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Pretty good effort, I don't think I've ever seen someone hit on the answer to their question AS they are writing it. ^_^

A couple of points though: 今のうち has more of a meaning of "right away/right now", with "while I can" being a more casual interpretation. And とでも before the verb carries the meaning of "or something"

Also, according to what Chocolate said in your link, "～ておけ is the imperative of ～ておく which means to do and leave it as it is." .... therefor I think the implicit meaning is more along the lines of

"Are you telling me to get his signature right away and get it over with, or something!?"

(... although now that I think about it, maybe what she means is that ～ておく carries the meaning of having achieved the goal of the action... which is hard to convey in conversational English... maybe ""Are you telling me to go and make sure to get his signature right away, or something!?")

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  • that is a good nuance to know about 〜ておく, its a form i have a bit of trouble with. eow.alc.co.jp suggests that 今のうちに can have that sense of while you can which was where I got it from. eow.alc.co.jp/… – Janusz ヤヌシュ Nov 30 '18 at 21:57
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    I was looking at that part of my answer saying hmm... I think I will change it to "as well as" instead of "rather than"... the thing is that "can" expresses ability, while 今のうち expresses immediacy.... – ericfromabeno Nov 30 '18 at 22:00
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    I interpreted 今のうちに in this context as referring to "right now while Touya is still in the go club and getting his signature is still something I can feasibly do", would I be correct? – Janusz ヤヌシュ Nov 30 '18 at 22:16
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    I will give you this - I believe that it implies that "now" is the best time to do it. ^_^ In other words, it implies not just "do it now" but "do it now because it makes sense to do so/there's no better time for it" (a caveat with me is that much of my Japanese understanding is experiential rather than study-based... so... sometimes a nuance I perceive is just in my head) – ericfromabeno Nov 30 '18 at 22:24
  • that sounds about right to me and how I interpreted it. – Janusz ヤヌシュ Nov 30 '18 at 22:27
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Then by the magic of stackexchange (not the first time it's happened), when I started writing up this question it suddenly clicked in my head that と following け was the quoting particle for 言う, and then I discovered that とでも言うんスか is simply a variant of this set phrase, meaning pretty much what I thought it meant, "are you saying that x?".

Fake Edit Again: Found another question explaining that ておけ is an imperative form. In other words what he is actually saying is "Are you telling me to get his signature now while I still can!?" and I believe I managed to answer my own question in the process of writing.

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