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I am listening to a song and came across もう充分だよってきっと言うかな

Is it possible to use かな and きっと in a sentence? It sounds like "you will maybe definitely say [it's already more than enough]", which doesn't really make sense

Newbie
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  • Related: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/19736/7810 – broccoli facemask Apr 20 '20 at 06:17
  • @broccolifacemask-cloth From what I gather, かな can mean absolutely uncertain to a very high degree of uncertainty. But it still doesn't makes sense to me because きっと means "definitely"(100%) and then a かな is added, which makes the degree of certainty ambiguous – Newbie Apr 20 '20 at 07:56
  • @Newbie きっと is always used very subjectively. It doesn't have the sense of "this is 100% definitely going to be this way", it's more like a very strong guess/wish/expectation, approaching but not quite reaching that 100%. – sbkgs4686 Apr 20 '20 at 09:00

1 Answers1

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The nuance of this きっと言うかな is somewhere between "I believe he will say" or "I guess he will say".

The meaning of きっと is close to "I believe" rather than "definitely". It's a relatively subjective expression and the statement does not have to be based on an evidence. Using "definitely" to translate きっと is too strong in many cases.

かな is both "I wonder/doubt" and "I guess", depending on the context and the intonation. For example, できるかな can sound like "I doubt I can do it", "I wonder if I can do it" or "I guess I can do it". It's usually easy to tell the meaning when you hear it, but it's difficult to describe the pronunciation difference in text form... Anyway, in this context this かな is more like "I guess" because it's used with きっと.

naruto
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