Meaning of て-form followed by さ


Hamaji is asked if his house ever recieves year-end gifts. He says that they
get dried shiitake mushrooms. His friends express surprise. One of them says
"it's not bad but..." and then Hamaji says:

> 「悪くはねぇんだよ。うちのかーちゃんなんてすげー喜んじゃってさぁ」  
>  "It's **not** bad. Our mother ends up really happy" (my TL attempt)

I'm assuming 喜んじゃって is the て-form of 喜んじゃう which is a contraction of 喜んでしまう. I
don't understand why it is in て-form or what the meaning of さぁ is. What is
this てさぁ ending all about?




This -て and this さぁ are not strongly related, and we can discuss them
separately.

Sentence-end -て is often used to [make a casual
request](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/12026/5010), and aside from
that, it's used to make the sentence "unfinished", and keep the listener's
attention.

  * [Ending sentences with the て form](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/28577/5010)

And さぁ/さあ/さ is yet another sentence-ending particle like ね(え), よ(お), わ.

So -てさぁ basically works as the attention drawer, like _you know_.

> It's not bad. My mom was actually really happy with that, _you know_.




[て/で]さ[あ] doesn't really mean much, it just emphasizes the speaker's feeling
was moved or the speaker was troubled in one way or another. "Trouble" might
not be a good word here, as it can mean something overwhelmingly joyful has
happened to the speaker.

> 聞いてよ〜 タカシの奴がひどくってさぁ〜  
>  Listen to me [You know what?] [My boyfried] Takashi really annoys me!

