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In Episode 1 of Amanchu!, Hikari bestows the nickname "Teko" on Futaba, with the following explanation.

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Hikari: [Gazes longingly into Futaba's eyes]

Hikari: Wow! Your eyebrows are so thin. They're, like, one-tenth as thick as the average. One-tenth...Tenth...Teko! An adorable nickname!

How did Hikari hit upon this nickname in the original Japanese? And bonus question: the translation I read of the manga translated Futaba's nickname as "Dotty". Was this completely out of nowhere, or does it have some justification in the original?

Torisuda
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    It's probably a short form of some word that has a "te" sound somewhere at the beginning sticked together with "ko" which means "child" and is commonly used in such nickname portmanteaus. Try listening to what the characters are saying in that scene and you'll probably hear a "te" word. – Hakase Jul 26 '16 at 08:27

1 Answers1

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In Japanese, Hikari says that Futaba's eyebrows look like tenten, the two strokes added to a kana to change the voicing value, also known as dakuten. E.g. か ka becomes が ga.

You can see the resemblance in this picture from the manga, at least if you imagine Futaba's eyebrows both pointing in the same direction:

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"Dotty" came from a translation of tenten as "dot", presumably because "Periody" or "Semicolony" didn't sound good.

Torisuda
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