質問: **This question already has answers here**: Why is 知りません the negative form of 知っています? (2 answers) Closed last year. I remember reading a bit about this topic in the answer of another post, but I specifically wanted to make this its own question: It seems to make sense that "to know" is typically 知っている, because 知る by itself only means something along the lines of "to get to know". But going with that meaning, I can't quite grasp the logic behind "not knowing" being 知らない as opposed to, let's say, 知っていない. Is there a good explanation for this? For example, 知る actually having a much broader meaning than what I described?
回答: This is easy to misunderstand because the Vている form can mean a few things. Here are two that you're probably aware of: 1. Doing something or a continuous activity i.e.: running 走っている, eating 食べている, walking 歩いている, thinking 考えている 2. A state i.e.: the door is open ドアが開いている, the cup is broken コップが割れている(われている) It might be easier to think of 知っている as a verb that falls under the 1st category. As it's a continuous activity, then you can't be in a certain state if you haven't started it (i.e if you don't know something). I hope this makes sense! Also, once you know something, you can't un-know it or stop knowing it. So while you can say to express the current state of something: 走っている 走っていない ドアが開いている ドアが開いていない ...It would be strange to say 知っていない。 Examples: > > 生徒1: 先生はどこに行ったのか、知っている? > > 生徒2:ごめん、知らない。 > > > 生徒1:明日は授業(じゅぎょう)がないよ。 > > 生徒2:知っている。 > > 生徒3:それは知らなかった。(しかし、今は知っている) > > > Note that 知らなかった is used, not 知っていなかった。This also reflects the verb being a continuous activity. N.B. Just to make things more confusing, all of the below are used in Japanese and I just memorised them after failing to find a good explanation: わかる (to understand) わからない (negative form) わかっていない (te-iru form)