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I was reading some comments on this Youtube video and this comment in particular had a bunch of likes:

かんーわええのぅ。

I looked it up and it translates as "I don't know" on Google Translate.

Can someone explain this one to me? I looked up the parts like かん on Jisho but it still doesn't make much sense. I just started learning so I'm probably just missing something basic.

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    What was the video about? It could be an extreme bastardization of 「かわいいな」if it involved something cute. Sep 15, 2020 at 8:59
  • It was a video about a red panda. Funny that Google Translate got it so wrong.
    – Logan
    Sep 15, 2020 at 17:16
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    Google translate getting it wrong is not unusual.
    – user36788
    Sep 15, 2020 at 21:42

1 Answer 1

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かんーわええのぅ。。 鼻水までもが愛おしく見える。世界いちかわいいよー。

They meant 「かわいいな。」/「かわいいなあ。」, "Wow that's cute." They wrote it in an emphatic, lengthened, and nonstandard (dialectal or classic) way. (な/なあ indicates 詠嘆/exclamation. Related post here.)

(What they meant is also clear from the last part of their comment, 「かわいいよー。」)

いい often changes to ええ in western dialects. Related: this and this.

The のぅ is the sentence-ending particle / 終助詞「のう」. See デジタル大辞泉. (Don't confuse this with 終助詞「の」.) Please see also this and this. It corresponds to standard/modern な、なあ or ね、ねえ. (デジタル大辞泉 says: 近代以降は「ね」「ねえ」「なあ」が一般化し、現在では主に、方言として西日本で用いられる。) This のう is still heard in some western dialects, but it can also sound old-fashioned and is often used as 老人語/old man's speech, a kind of 役割語/role language in fiction (and this may be why someone has responded to it 「おじいちゃん目線w」).

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  • Thanks! I appreciate the detailed response.
    – Logan
    Sep 17, 2020 at 5:57

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