ちょっともっと？

[spurrymoses]

I'm just gonna come out and admit my Japanese language mistake here, as it may be useful to someone.

You might think that because chotto 「ちょっと」means [a little] and because motto 「もっと」means [more] - that you can use these two words together in Japanese. For example, you may have just eaten two different chocolate bars and want to suggest that one has a little bit stronger taste than the other. You might think to say (as I did) 「ちょっともっと味が強い」. The taste of this one, is a little bit (more) stronger...

By using chotto motto 「ちょっともっと」together, I was thinking 'a little bit more'. But this doesn't work in Japanese. The sentence I've made up using ちょっともっと, just isn't right - ask a Japanese person.

The correction would be something like this:
「すこし味が強い。」
At least, that's the correction I was given from a native. This, admittedly, relies on context; you can't really say this if it's not obvious that you're comparing it to the other chocolate bar you just ate (that your listener knows about).

Still, there might be other ways to say it. I'd welcome any other suggestions, as a matter of fact.

It was a pity too, because ちょっともっと sounds pretty cool

[JanneM]

My local native speaker tends to use "もうちょっと" or "もう少し" for "a little more", but I don't know how grammatically correct or appropriate it is in general use, of course. And for the specific case of comparing two items it doesn't work, of course. I would use something like "あのより、ちょと辛いね".

I've tended to (and still do) transplant Swedish grammatical structures to Japanese; they're not very enlightening for most of you, though, so I won't bore you with examples.

[Applecart]

Assuming that the context of a comparison was clear I'd probably say こっちの方がちょっと甘い。

ちょっと can be a fun word though. Beacuse is is often used just to soften what's coming up it can turn up in phrases where if you took it's meaning strictly as " a little", it would seem very odd.