「〜そうにない」 unfamiliar usage of そう

Question

I'm playing a video game in Japanese, and one of the characters said

僕にもわかりそうにない。

I understand that (verb stem)そう means "it seems" or "it appears", but I've never seen (verb stem)そう used with the に particle.

My guess is that the sentence means something like:

I don't seem to know either.

Am I translating it correctly? What is the meaning of this construction?

As for your second sentence, are you sure you've never seen V + しかない (e.g. 諦めるしかない)? — Earthliŋ, Jul 12 '14 at 20:44
@Earthliŋ No, I've only seen しかない used with nouns (e.g. コンピュータが一台しかない), but I now realize that my confusion with this sentence isn't related to そう, so I'll edit it out of the question. — rurouniwallace, Jul 12 '14 at 20:59
As you can see here そうにない is a phrase and it means "doesn't seems like; extremely unlikely to". So I think that your translation is correct. — renchan, Jul 13 '14 at 10:02
You may be interested in the difference between 知る and 分かる. 「分かりそうにない」 is "unlikely that I can understand (the difficult textbook, concept, etc.)" as opposed to just knowing something as a fact. — naruto, Jul 14 '14 at 00:12
@Ataraxia If you don't mind me asking, what video game was it? — Toyu_Frey, Sep 15 '19 at 05:14
@Toyu_Frey Man it's been a while, but I think it was Tales of Xillia 2 — rurouniwallace, Sep 17 '19 at 18:52

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 13 '14 at 16:27

Your translation is correct.
「そう」is for positive sentence, 「そうに」is for negative sentence.
「そう」/「そうに」also have some meaning of "in the future".

I also understand.

僕にもわかります
僕にもわかる

I understand... maybe.

僕にもわかりそうです
僕にもわかりそう

I don't understand.

僕にはわかりません
僕にはわからない

I don't understand, ether.

僕にもわかりません
僕にもわからない

It's hard to understand. Ask someone else.
「そうもない」is much harder to achieve the goal than 「そうにない」.

僕にはわかりそうもありません
僕にはわかりそうもない

I don't understand ether.
Nearly same as 「わからない」 but 「わかりそうにない」is a little bit soft.

僕にもわかりそうにない

"(I'll try but..) it seems too dificult for me to understand"
「わからなそうです」is more softer expression

僕にもわからなそうです

1 Answers1