Yeah, you got it! After 30 years on the internet I should know by now whats understandable for others and what's not (I honestly just realized that English speakers don't say 'tja'), but alas.
We have a sound we usually spell “yeah”, which can also be an informal “yes” but can also server roughly the role of a “Well, “. The same spelling is sometimes employed for a cheer that might otherwise be spelled “yay” and sounds very different, though.
I can think of at least one regionalism or dialect that has something that I bet sounds similar to yours, that might even be used the same way yours is: “valley girl”.
The real tell was the spelling. We don’t usually use “T” to harden a phoneme at the start of a word—we do later, though, as in “itch”—and we don’t use “J” that way. “Ch” is probably the closest we’ve got to what you were going for with “j”. If a native English speaker were trying to reproduce the sound you’re going for in text, they’d not have spelled it that way unless trying to make it appear foreign.
Yeah, you got it! After 30 years on the internet I should know by now whats understandable for others and what's not (I honestly just realized that English speakers don't say 'tja'), but alas.
We have a sound we usually spell “yeah”, which can also be an informal “yes” but can also server roughly the role of a “Well, “. The same spelling is sometimes employed for a cheer that might otherwise be spelled “yay” and sounds very different, though.
I can think of at least one regionalism or dialect that has something that I bet sounds similar to yours, that might even be used the same way yours is: “valley girl”.
The real tell was the spelling. We don’t usually use “T” to harden a phoneme at the start of a word—we do later, though, as in “itch”—and we don’t use “J” that way. “Ch” is probably the closest we’ve got to what you were going for with “j”. If a native English speaker were trying to reproduce the sound you’re going for in text, they’d not have spelled it that way unless trying to make it appear foreign.