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A mother is telling her kid: 「お風呂わいたから入っちゃって」. From the context, I am guessing it means "The water's heated up, come in (take the bath)!".

I don't understand how「入っちゃって」 could mean a request / command here. Is 「っちゃ」is short for 「しまう」or 「ては」? Neither makes sense to me here. And what is the role of the final「って]?

Thanks!

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First, yes, てしまう is commonly contracted to ちゃう (and でしまう to じゃう). They mean the same, but ちゃう is more casual as a contracted form.

Second, as for the meaning of しまう・ちゃう here, I think the slightly less common usage of "do completely" fits, with ちゃって being itself the て-form of ちゃう, making it a casual/friendly request. This usage is very common, and is derived (I believe!) from just dropping the ください that you might expect to see there.

So, putting those together, you could translate 入っちゃって as "get in completely" or "get in fully". Perhaps more stylishly, you could translate the sentence as "The bath's hot, so get right in".

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    minor typo?: 入ってちゃって →入っちゃって in last line. – kimi Tanaka May 27 '20 at 12:57
  • Good spot, thanks :) edited! – henreetee May 27 '20 at 12:58
  • @henreetee I've always struggled with this usage of しまう. When you say "get in completely/fully" it sounds to me like you are saying "fully submerge yourself. Don't leave your arms out of the water" for example. I'm sure that isn't what you mean, but I'm not quite sure what you do mean. Can you think of another way to describe what this fully-ness is all about? Thanks. – user3856370 May 27 '20 at 13:56
  • I've not seen this usage in this context before, so I'm not entirely sure but–while you could be right–I think it's rather closer to getting right into the bath (e.g. sitting down deep into the bath), rather than necessarily completely submerging oneself into the water. Those might effectively be the same request if the Japanese bath is deep (as they often are) and the child is small (!), but I suppose the intended request is to encourage the child to get in and have a 'proper' bath, rather than say, stand in it, or play in it, or specifically submerge themselves (which would be odd!). – henreetee May 27 '20 at 14:13

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