I've found a sentence like this:
私がちょっとぐらい 自己中で 常識がなくても 許してくれる
Which I've parsed as:
Even if I'm selfish and lack common sense, he'll forgive me, to the extent that it's just a bit.
or more naturally,
He'll tolerate even my selfishness and thoughtlessness, at least for a little while.
But I'm pretty uncertain about the ちょっとぐらい in particular. Both words can perform several functions, and I assumed their combination would be a common idiom, but none of the dictionaries I've checked have examples. What does the combination ちょっとぐらい mean? Can it mean different things in different contexts?
Answer
くらい/ぐらい by itself sometimes implies the word before it is a small number/amount.
- 10円くらいで騒ぐな。 Don't make a fuss about (just) 10 yen.
- 30分くらいなら待てる。 I can wait for 30 minutes (implying 30 minutes is not too long).
In this sentence, ぐらい after ちょっと is optional, but adds "just" or "only" nuance to ちょっと ("a bit").
In general, ちょっと can be translated both as "for a while" (time) and "a bit" (degree). In this sentence, however, ちょっと modifies 自己中で常識がない, and you cannot be 常識がない only for an hour, for example. So I think "only a bit" is the better interpretation in this case.
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