What is 「知れないじゃない」

[GaijinMiki]

I saw 「知れないじゃない」 in a song and asked my Japanese friend why it is not 「知らないじゃない」. She didn't know, so we both concluded it might be slang. Is this true or am I missing something?

 

[Mike Cash]

Have you learned the potential form of verbs yet?

 

[GaijinMiki]

Yes, but only in a basic sense. Sometimes I see a verb in potential form and have no idea why it is like that. So that might be the problem, haha.

Still wondering why my Japanese friend didn't know what it meant though...

 

[nekojita]

If you only gave her that one line, maybe she meant "I can't imagine the context/don't know why they used it in that place in particular".

By any chance, does the previous line of lyrics end in かも?

 

[GaijinMiki]

Oh, true. And yes! You would be correct. Actually, I think I figured it out now that you said that.

The lyrics were divided up like:

～かも
知れないじゃない。

I must have accidentally assumed かも was just かも in that context (like in casual speech) and 知れないじゃない was a new part in the sentence. Now I see what happened, haha. The whole thing was 「～かも知れないじゃない」which is like "might ... isn't that so?" Oh, wow, I'm really bad at this. lol

Thanks for pointing it out!

 

[Mike Cash]

The かも in casual conversation is from かも知れない.

Did you not know that?

 

[nekojita]

It is extremely common that attempting to take each line of lyrics as a single standalone phrase results in Bad Things.

 

[GaijinMiki]

The かも in casual conversation is from かも知れない.

Did you not know that?

Yes, I did. I also know the 丁寧 form for it 「かも知れません」. As I said though, the way the lyrics looked on the sheet made it seem like the 知れない part was a totally new word. ハハっ！

It is extremely common that attempting to take each line of lyrics as a single standalone phrase results in Bad Things.

ハハっ！No kidding! I'll remember this in the future when translating lyrics. Thanks so much for the help! :3