How is ちょっと、たべたら、どう used in this sentence?


This is from the second episode of Noir. The two women are sitting quietly
eating dinner. One of the women says to the other: ちょっとは美味しそうに食べたらどう？

For the life of me, I can't parse this sentence into something understandable
in English. Here are my issues:

  1. How is ちょっと the topic (or is it subject) of the sentence? What is its meaning here?

  2. 食べたら from what I know is "When you eat", but I don't know how to quite translate it with 美味しそうに.

  3. The whole phrase is in front of どう so it is some type of relative or dependent clause. So is the beginning of that sentence, "How about (that) when you eat ...."? This is my guess. I'm not sure if I'm correct though.




Ok. So after some searching and accidental googling, I think I've figured it
out.

`<verb>` \+ たらどう（ですか）？ Means "why don't you `<verb>`". It indicates a
suggestion. It can also be used to express a negative connotation when the
speaker is dissatisfied with how the listener is performing (or not
performing) the .

美味しそうに - an `<i-adjective>` \+ そう = "seems/looks like `<i-adjective>`". そう
could also be translated as "as if" instead of "seems" or "looks" if the
translation requires it.

ちょっとは - has already been explained above.

So the sentence means (as others have pointed out):

> Why don't you eat as if the food is delicious, just a little?
>
> or
>
> Why don't you eat, just a little bit, as if it's delicious?



  1. は is expressing the contrastive topic "even to the slightest extent" as contrasted to "to the normal extent/fully".
  2. This is a rhetorical question. It is syntactically a question, but the intent is a suggestion.
  3. You are on the right track. The preceding clause is a conditional clause.

> 'How about if you eat it in such a way even to the slightest extent (if not
> fully) to make it look delicious?'

