Japanese with Manga

Not seeing the fabric shop with 〜っぽい

Grammar Explanation: Kind of like with 〜っぽい

On a city street, Nibe gestures toward a brick wall with a tree behind it, next to a furniture store. Makoto and two friends stand behind her, and Yayoi, in a bucket hat at the back of the group, raises her hand.
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Tomoe Nibe, a witch who works with clothes, has brought Makoto and her friends to the fabric shop she runs in Sugamo. She tells them they’ve arrived and that the shop carries fabric from all over the world.

弥生(やよい):
「あ　すみませーん　あたし見(み)えてないっぽいです」
“Um, excuse me! Looks like I can't see it.”

Key Points

1A guess with clause ＋ っぽい
  • 見(み)えてない is a whole clause in its plain negative form. っぽい after it makes a guess, “it seems that” or “looks like”, much as みたい would.
  • The negative ない sits inside the clause, before っぽい. That’s how you can tell this guess apart from words like 子供(こども)っぽい, where っぽい makes a new adjective.
  • The guess is a hedge. Yayoi is still working out that the problem is on her side.
2Adding です
  • The clause ＋ っぽい guess is very casual, but Yayoi adds です to sound polite to Nibe. っぽいです turns up in casual polite speech like this, while formal speech would use ようです.
3見(み)えてない, “can’t see it”
  • 見(み)える means “to be visible” or “can see”. It describes what reaches your eyes, not a deliberate act of looking.
  • 〜てない is the casual contraction of 〜ていない. 見(み)えていない describes the current state: the shop isn’t showing up for her right now.
4Getting attention with すみません
  • すみません here means “excuse me”. With the raised hand and the stretched すみませーん, she calls out to Nibe, who is walking ahead.

Vocabulary

(Excuse me)

すみません is a polite “excuse me” or “I’m sorry”. People also use it to get someone’s attention, as when calling over a shop clerk, and sometimes to say thank you.

(I)

あたし means “I” or “me”. It is a casual, feminine form of 私(わたし).

(To be visible)

見(み)える is for something to be seen. It also means to seem or look a certain way.

(-ish)

っぽい follows a word to say something seems like it or tends toward it.

See Also

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