Impossible to know in Chinese
impossible to know · HSK 7–9
不得而知
Press again to hear it slower.
- 不 not
- 得 to obtain
- 而 and
- 知 to know
他为什么离开，我们不得而知。 Why he left, we have no way of knowing.
It joins your Backpack for Review.
More words with 不 or 得 or 而 or 知
See any word in its sentence
The extension shows a card like this for 不得而知 and every other word on any page or YouTube subtitle, with the meaning that sentence uses.
How do you say impossible to know in Chinese?
Impossible to know in Chinese is 不得而知 (bù dé ér zhī).
Which word should I use?
Start with the first one: it is the easiest on the HSK list. The others say it too, often in a more formal way or for a narrower sense; each one’s page has real sentences that show how it is used.
Where do these words come from?
Our own dictionary’s meanings for the official HSK word list. A word is shown for an English word when that is one of its first meanings; the easiest word whose first meaning it is comes first.
More free tools
Greetings: hello, good morning and goodbye. Measure words: the classifier for any noun. Tone practice: say a word and see your tones. Read any Mandarin: point at a word for its meaning.
Meanings from our own dictionary. Chinese often has more than one way to say a word.