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A: 君だけこれを知らなかった。

A': You are the only person who did not know this.

As しか must be followed by a negative predicate then I have to write as

B: 君しかこれを知らなくなかった。

Confirmation question

Is 君しかこれを知らなくなかった the same as 君だけこれを知らなかった?

Edit

Based on the given comment below, I have to mention that if I just use one negation as follows,

君しかこれを知らなかった。

then the meaning is

You are the only person who knew this.

which is totally different from the meaning I want to say.

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1 Answers1

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Is 君しかこれを知らなくなかった the same as 君だけこれを知らなかった?

A simple answer would be 'No', but more precisely, it is just not possible to answer this question. Why not? Because the first sentence is not grammatical and therefore, it does not really mean anything.

As you stated, 「しか」 must be followed by a negative predicate. 「知らなくなかった」, however, is affirmative. Why is it affirmative? That is because it contains two forms of 「ない」 in 「なく」 and 「なかった」. Two 「ない's」 cancel each other's negativity and make the phrase affirmative. Thus,

「知らなくなかった」 means 「知っていた」.

If you absolutely must use 「しか」 to form a sentence that means the same thing as:

「君だけ（が）これを知らなかった。」 = " You are the only person who did not know this."

You could do so by saying:

「これを知らなかったのは、君しかいない。」 or

「君しかいないよ、これを知らなかったのは。」

Those two sentences use 「しか」 correctly.

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