こんにちわ,
I came across this sentence \[ できるかできらいかじゃねえ \] which was translated “It doesn’t matter if you can do it or not”. However, I couldn’t quite comprehend the sentence in anyway. I came to conclusion that it could be very colloquial version of \[ 出来られるか出来られないかじゃない \]. Is my assessment right here? And is this some kind of idiom or is there some grammar rule s.t. \[ (verb in potential form) + か + (verb in negative potential form) + か \] has certain meaning or something. And is it common to shorten できられない to できらい. Note that I didn’t see the written form of the original sentence and although I listened to it over and over many times, what I wrote might be incorrect.
I would appreciate all the info about the grammar behind this sentence 🙂
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btw. I tried to post this in simple questions thread, but I couldn’t because typing was so buggy. Not sure if it’s my computer or something else, but just wanted to let you know.
3 comments
Are you sure it’s not a typo of できない？
できらい、できられる、できられない are not Japanese.
First of all, ‘できるかできらいかじゃねえ’ should be ‘できるかできないかじゃねえ’. ‘できらい’ and ‘できられない’ do not exist. The negative form of ‘できる’ is ‘できない’. ‘できるかできないかじゃねえ’ is a colloquial version of ‘できるかできないかではない’.
I’m assuming it’s actually できるかできないかじゃねえ
let’s break it down into 3 sentences
できるか can you do it? (できる= to be capable of doing, to be possible)
できないか can’t you do it?
じゃねえ colloquial form of じゃない ‘it’s not’
so literally you can translate it as “it’s not (a matter of whether) you can or can’t do it” there’s no special grammar here.
does this make sense?