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How do you use もんか? Once, I saw this sentence:

「お前{まえ}に俺{おれ}の気持{きもち}がわかるもんか。」

I understand the meaning but I don't know how you can use it

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  • Try dis. maggiesensei.com/2010/04/08/… Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 20:25
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    It looks like the example might have come from that site. (Of course, we can't tell for sure unless the OP decides to tell us―this question would be better with some details.)
    – user1478
    Commented Jan 15, 2015 at 23:23
  • A bunch more examples are found on tatoeba (tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/…). Sounds like you use もんか when you actually want to express the opposite...
    – Urukann
    Commented Jan 16, 2015 at 0:56

1 Answer 1

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「もんか」 is the colloquial pronunciation of 「ものか」.

The usual structure:

「Mini-sentence/Verb phrase/Adjective + ものか/もんか」

This expresses the speaker's total denial regarding what is described before the ものか/もんか part.

「お[前]{まえ}に[俺]{おれ}の[気持]{きもち}がわかるもんか!」

= "There's just no way you could understand my feelings!"

(Adult) female speakers might use 「ものですか」 instead.

How to use it (or rather, how not to use it):

「~~~ものか/もんか」 is obviously not an expression that you would use often or repeatedly because of its highly negative resonance. You could end up sounding unreasonably angry (and even funny) if you used it incorrectly. I would go so far as to say that you would probably hear it more often in fiction than in real life. The last thing you want to do is to sound like a fictional character, which unfortunately happens all the time in today's world of Japanese-as-a-foreign-language.

You could use it with close friends and they will think nothing of it. It is just not something you would say to strangers, people older than you or people you do not know very well even when you rightfully want to make a statement of total denial. You would sound far more natural and civilized using phrases such as:

「~~~はずがない。」、「~~~って(or という)ことはない(と思う)。」、「~~~って、そんなわけはないでしょう(or ないだろう)。」 , etc.

Try replacing the ~~~ with 「お前に俺の気持ちが分かる」 for practice.

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  • can you say something like やれるもんか if you wanted to express disbelief in a phrase like "there's no way they can do that" or like 全部食べれるもんか if it was like an eating competition or something? in those cases i feel like the phrases you provided at the end wouldn't give the same nuance at all
    – frei
    Commented Mar 14, 2017 at 3:46
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    @frei Yes, but ~もんか sounds like childish. All of the three phrases have different nuances but they all mean that you bet/think they can't do it. 「~わけがない」 or 「~はずがない」 is the right translation of "there is no way [clause]". 全部食べられるわけがない!!
    – miqi
    Commented Mar 14, 2017 at 16:17

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