To say that I don't know, I use
Je ne sais pas.
To me that means
I not I-know not.
So either ne or pas is redundant.
Can you just leave one out?
Also, if I is already encoded into sais, why the Je?
Can you just say:
Ne sais
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Outside the imperative mood, a conjugated verb requires a subject in French so you can't drop the pronoun here. I believe that's similar in English. Spanish and Italian on the other hand do not require pronouns, one reason is their verbal forms are clearly distincts phonetically.
About the redundancy, spoken French ususally drops the ne but in written French, the split negative is the norm. Technically ne and pas do not play the same role so they can't both be word-by-word translated to not.
There have already been dozens of questions about them:
Does "ne" not negate words that are already negative?
Does `ne` and `pas` have a different meaning?
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jlliagre
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saisalone can meantu sais, not onlyje sais– Toto Apr 09 '21 at 16:17Iis encoded intoam, can't we dropI? Sinceheis encoded intois, can't we drophe? Whereas if you knew Spanish, I would better understand where you're coming from. – Luke Sawczak Apr 09 '21 at 20:39Iis encoded inambutheis not encoded inis, asiscan also be used withsheandit. SoAm hereworksIs heredoesn't. – Pascal Widmann Apr 09 '21 at 21:13