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When I want to ask whether or not something I have is what I think it is, I can't figure out exactly what to say.

これは梅じゃないの? (Rising intonation)

Is this not a plum?

これは梅じゃないね。(Falling intonation)

This isn't a plum, right?

How could I say something like

"This isn't a plum?!" (With a sense of surprise)

"Isn't this a plum?"

For a different example, here is the following from よつばと.

Which is translated officially to this.

In my mind, the translation is "Aren't I dead?" I guess I don't know if I'm being semantic or not, sorry.

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  • how about 「これは梅ではないのか?」
    – Zang MingJie
    Commented Jul 21, 2019 at 9:41
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    Maybe you could add some explanatory text in brackets also to the first English explanation. I didn't understand the what the difference between the 1st ("Is this not a plum?") and the 3rd ("This isn't a plum?!" (With a sense of surprise)). Based on the above, I think the Japanese translation you gave to the 1st English one would fit well to the 3rd English sentence (i.e. I think that [This isn't a plum?!" (With a sense of surprise)] could be translated as ["これは梅じゃないの? (Rising intonation)"]
    – Tuomo
    Commented Jul 21, 2019 at 13:00
  • Edited. Also, to me, the difference between the 1st and 3rd to me is that in the 1st sentence, someone just said that isn't a plum, but you are 100% sure it is, so you are kind of incredulous that someone could think it isn't a plum. The 3rd one is more like it looked like a plum but when you picked it up, you realized it was a bun and you are super surprised. I hope that makes it more clear?
    – jessen
    Commented Jul 22, 2019 at 8:03
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    Yes, now it makes more sense also to a non-native speaker like me. While not being native in Japanese either, I would now say that the translation you gave to the 1st one may not so much stress that you are 100% sure you are right. If wanting to stress more and/or be a bit more confrontative, one could say eg. "これは梅じゃないっておっしゃってますか。" (asking not "is this not a plum?" but rather confirming "So, you are saying this is not a plum?". Similarly for the 3rd one, if the idea was to just express you found out yourself, and got surprised, maybe more natural to say e.g. "なんだ...これは梅じゃなかったんだ!"
    – Tuomo
    Commented Jul 22, 2019 at 14:23
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    え、梅じゃない？！ and これは梅だろう？ would be my two for the last two, but I don't think that's what you are looking for. ^^;;;
    – Jeshizaemon
    Commented Jul 23, 2019 at 2:22

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