My Japanese friend asked me whether I believe in an afterlife.

I wanted to say, "I don't believe, but also I don't not believe." My point is
that while I do not believe, I like to keep an open mind.

I intentionally use the double negative, because the meaning is different from
simply collapsing the double negative into a positive: "I don't believe, but
also I believe," which makes no sense.

The best I could come up with in my clunky Japanese is "信じていないけど信じたい" but that
doesn't really say what I want either.

Is there a better way to get my point across? Does Japanese make possible
these kinds of tortuous constructs?
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2013-08-28T04:12:07.397
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2013-08-28T05:39:39.093
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question
grammar negation nuances
How to say a double negative in Japanese
I would say it as `信じても信じなくもない` or `信じてはないけど、信じなくもない`.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-08-28T04:18:10.207
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2013-08-28T05:39:39.093
2013-08-28T05:39:39.093
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answer