Re: To know and to understand

"Konrad Den Ende" writes:

> Listening to Pimsleur i discovered that apparently "I don't know"  
> =   "[wakarimasen]" "I don't understand"   =   "[wakarimasen]"

> What i wonder is how to distinuish between those two  meanings if
> (when?) they come to colide in the sentence. Let's engineer a
> sentence here: "I don't know and i don't understand". I have
> trouble believeing it would be: "[wakarimasen-to wakarimasen]".

That's a kind of nifty sentence.  Have you studied engineering?

It would probably be interpreted as something like "Whenever I don't
understand, I don't understand."


> ...

I wonder how accurate it might be to say that "wakaru" has to do with
information?  "Wakaranai" would be something like "I don't have
access to the information to answer your question."  

One place that "wakaru" won't work is for knowing people, say.  No
one would say "Ano hito wakarimasuka" for "Do you know that guy?"

And only "Shiranai!" works right for "Heck if I care!"

Bart