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LEARN + JAPANESE / 49 of 186 JLPT N4

Could Go Either Way 〜かもしれない

The sky is dark, but you haven’t checked the forecast: もうすぐ雨が降るかもしれません. かもしれない leaves room for a possibility without making a confident prediction.

Hint · 힌트
かもしれない sits at the low end of a certainty scale that also includes だろう and でしょう, which you already know. だろう leans toward “probably,” かもしれない just says “possible, no more than that,” a genuinely open guess rather than an educated one.
Hint · 힌트
Nouns and な-adjectives drop だ entirely before かもしれない: 家だ becomes 家かもしれません, never 家だかもしれません. Verbs and い-adjectives attach in their plain form with no change, and かもしれない itself never conjugates to match politeness, only しれません softens it for polite speech.

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