Hi, so I was going through 天気の子 (Weathering With You) and at the beginning of the movie he says
あの日見たことは全部夢だったんじゃないかと今では思う
でも夢じゃない
I pretty much know what’s being said here based on the context of the movie, but I’m confused with 夢だったんじゃない because I can’t really figure out what it means. If anyone can help me out here that’d be great, thanks.
Just a pure guess, but it looks like “it was like a dream” to me.
んじゃないか - “isn’t it”, “wasn’t it a dream”, “was something like a dream”. So, speaker is doubting/questioning “夢だった”, he/she feels uncertain about it.
全部夢だった
It was all a dream
全部夢だったんじゃないか
Wasn’t it all a dream?
全部夢だったんじゃないかと今では思う
Even now I wonder whether it was all a dream.
That’s how I think that sentence works.
But I’m not 100% sure.
(今では was a bit of a gamble. And I’m still not sure how or why the ん in んじゃないか is used.)
Ah, Weathering With You, I had a girlfriend once that I picked up that movie for and we watched it together. It didn’t work out but thanks for reminding me of the movie, made me smile.
Good luck with ur question though because I don’t have a clue.
Anyone can feel free to correct me but
だったん = だったの = just casual spoken explanatory past tense
じゃないか = wasn’t it? Isn’t it?
The English translation and meaning of じゃないか depends on the tone and the context.
Look up the Maggie Sensei article about じゃないか and んじゃないか or something similar and look at all the example sentences to see how versatile it is and how many variations of this there are e.g. omitting the か.
あの日見たこと
The things I saw that day
は全部夢だったん
were all a dream
じゃないか
weren’t they?
or [‘everything I saw that day was just a dream, wasn’t it?’]と今では思う
You could also parse it like
夢だった
のではないか
That makes sense, it’s just that when でも夢じゃない follows it, it confuses me a little bit. Because with the translation “Everything I saw that day was just a dream, wasn’t it? I wonder that now. But it wasn’t a dream”. It just sounds a bit off. Idk
I can see how it might seem strange to say that even now you wonder if something is true and then right after assert that it is true, but if you think about it, it’s not that strange.
It’s like saying “Even now I somtimes wonder if I really got the gold medal or it was just a dream, but it wasn’t a dream. I really did get the gold medal”, basicaly “I still can’t believe I did it, but I did.” You know what’s true, but you still cant help questioning it anyway because it’s so crazy etc.
Also if this is narration, they might be speaking from two different points of view in terms of time/knowledge.