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My question is about a line from a the song "Innocent Arrogance". The relevant verse goes like this:

見せたくないものばかりを
見せないから
大事なものさえも見つからない
綺麗なままでいることはできないじゃない
僕らは 僕らは 進もう

I've marked in bold what I perceive as double negation. However, multiple translation and Google Translate indicate that there is no double negation here. The translations I was able to find say that it means "You can't stay pretty\clean forever" but I don't see how that is possible when できない is immediately followed by じゃない.

Thanks!

Flaw
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Uri Greenberg
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    This question already has an answer here: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/505/ | https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/1485/ The じゃない is a tag question rather than a negative form – dvx2718 Jul 01 '23 at 13:43
  • @dvx2718 Thanks! For some reason when I searched for 「じゃない」I missed those questions. Just to confirm would you that translating the line as "We cannot stay pretty\clean forever, can we?" with the intention of trying to convince the listener that doing so would be impossible, would be a valid translation? – Uri Greenberg Jul 01 '23 at 14:17
  • @dvx2718 One more thing, if I understood the questions you've linked correctly then it means that the line might be ambiguous without hearing the pitch. I heard that sometimes in songs the proper pitch of a word may be ignored for the sake of the rhythm of the song so there isn't really a way to tell what it actually mean (though I agree that the tag question interpretation makes more sense). – Uri Greenberg Jul 01 '23 at 14:22
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    @UriGreenberg Regarding your question about ambiguity: It is unambiguous in this case that じゃない is a tag question because the "actual grammatical, negating" じゃない cannot come after a verb like that. Also, listening to the song, the じゃない is audibly a tag question じゃない. – Kaskade Jul 01 '23 at 15:14
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    @UriGreenberg yes the じゃない can be translated as ", can we?" or ", isn't it?" As fr the ambiguity part Kaskade's comment already explains clearly. – dvx2718 Jul 01 '23 at 16:39
  • @Kaskade I'm not so good with pitch - what is it that makes you certain? Is the pitch going up or down? – Uri Greenberg Jul 01 '23 at 18:56
  • @UriGreenberg I'm afraid I can't really describe it. – Kaskade Jul 01 '23 at 21:18

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