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What is the capital of Tunisia?

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What is the capital of Tunisia?

Subjunctive in “Je ne suis pas sûr pourquoi”

être sûr pourquoi

is not correct and doesn’t appear in French, except maybe in slang.

The correct expression is:

être sûr que

In the case above, IMHO a correct sentence would be:

Je ne sais pas pourquoi tellement de gens veulent/veuillent aller à ce concert. C’est un mauvais chanteur !

Which requires the indicative, rather than the subjunctive.

To answer the question, only the indicative present is felicitous in your context (indirect question):

Je ne suis pas sûr pourquoi tellement de gens veulent aller à ce concert. C’est un mauvais chanteur !

Which is different from the usual simple subordinate structure:

Je ne suis pas sûr que les gens veuillent aller à ce concert. C’est un mauvais chanteur !

Okay so *je ne suis pas sûr pourquoi…** isn’t grammatically correct, but I’m going to go on a limb here and assume your intention was to translate the English I’m not sure why…

Expressions that would translate this in French would be,

Je ne suis pas sûr de comprendre pourquoi / je ne comprends pas pourquoi (when expressing confusion, as in this case)

Je ne suis pas sûr de savoir pourquoi / je ne sais pas pourquoi (when expressing simple lack of knowledge without connoting confusion)

Now for the real question : subjunctive or indicative? In this case, the subjunctive doesn’t work, because you’re asserting that people are going to the concert, even though you don’t know why they’re going. The fact that the large number of people attending is a reality requires indicative.

You can also use the conditional to express that the situation is a hypothetical that is being doubted, eg:

Je ne suis pas sûr de savoir pourquoi il y aurait beaucoup de monde, vu comme il chante (I don’t see why there would be many people there, given how he sings)

 

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What is the capital of Tunisia?