Meaning of「なんじゃって」

Question

I have difficulty understanding the dialogue below.

Context: Somebody asked him what does this phrase「好きじゃなくもない」means. He thinks it means "like."

I have two ways to interpret his response.

I can rewrite the dialogue like this

「好き」なんじゃないかと思うかな

It will look like he is explaining this phrase means "like."

Or maybe

「好き」なんだと言う。思うかな

I heard that「って」is the short for「と言う」, so it will make more sense? It will make him to declare that this phrase means "like."

Which of the two interpretations above is correct for this context?

Answer 1

Your first interpretation is correct.

In Tokyo metropolitan dialect, ……では is contracted as ……じゃ and ないか in ……じゃないか can be omitted (usually denoted with a ellipsis). Therefore,

「好きなんじゃ……」って思うかな

in Tokyo metropolitan dialect is equivalent to

好きなのではないかと思うかな

in Standard Japanese.

On the other hand, this second interpretation

「好き」なんだと言う。思うかな

sounds impossible to me because...

• Interpreting なんじゃって as だと言う is impossible if the character is speaking a Kanto dialect (incl. Tokyo metropolitan dialect).
• Even if なんじゃって here means だと言う, the whole sentences does not make sense to me.

Meanwhile, as Dosei mentioned, some western dialects have copula じゃ (like だ in Standard Japanese) but they drop the quoting particle before 思う, 言う, etc., I guess.

Answer 2

なんじゃ can be dialect, maybe Kansai-ben(?), but afaik, it means ~ "can say that" or something like that.

My best guess would be like: "It means 'to like' I think... maybe..."

TLDR: if it is dialect, then your two interpretations might not be correct, but I can't say without knowing the character who says it. Japanese can be pretty difficult to interpret normally, and when you add dialects to the mix, it completely alters the meaning of some words ^-^'