サインもらっとけとでも言う - Breaking this phrase down


![1](https://i.stack.imgur.com/zSBRT.png)

今のうちにサインもらっとけとでも言うんスか！？

What I thought he was saying: "Are you saying we should get his signature now
while we still can!?"

I was stuck for several days on this sentence having trouble making sense of
it, suspecting that there was some contraction I was having trouble with. I
suspected that もらっとけ was a contraction of もらっておけ but wasn't sure where else to
go from there.

I was also wondering is what is the grammatical meaning of having the form ておけ
here, instead of ておこう or something? I've noticed that other questions like
[this
one](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/13892/%E3%81%97%E3%81%A8%E3%81%91-and-
sentence-translation) mention the ておけ form but doesn't really explain why the
sentence uses that form specifically.




Pretty good effort, I don't think I've ever seen someone hit on the answer to
their question AS they are writing it. ^_^

A couple of points though: 今のうち has more of a meaning of "right away/right
now", with "while I can" being a more casual interpretation. And とでも before
the verb carries the meaning of "or something"

Also, according to what Chocolate said in your link, "～ておけ is the imperative
of ～ておく which means to do and leave it as it is." .... therefor I think the
implicit meaning is more along the lines of

`"Are you telling me to get his signature right away and get it over with, or
something!?"`

(... although now that I think about it, maybe what she means is that ～ておく
carries the meaning of having achieved the goal of the action... which is hard
to convey in conversational English... maybe ""Are you telling me to go and
make sure to get his signature right away, or something!?")




Then by the magic of stackexchange (not the first time it's happened), when I
started writing up this question it suddenly clicked in my head that と
following け was the quoting particle for 言う, and then I discovered that
とでも言うんスか is simply a variant of [this set
phrase](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/56145/30813), meaning pretty much
what I thought it meant, "are you saying that x?".

Fake Edit Again: Found [another
question](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/4839/how-many-verb-
endings-to-express-do-this-please/4841#4841) explaining that ておけ is an
imperative form. In other words what he is actually saying is "Are you telling
me to get his signature now while I still can!?" and I believe I managed to
answer my own question in the process of writing.

