In the anime 少女革命ウテナ (Revolutionary Girl Utena) one of the shadow girls often says


which is translated in the subtitles as "I wonder, I wonder. Do you know what I wonder?".

I'm familiar with adding かしら after the predicate but I've not come across it as a standalone word before. Is this usage standard? If someone asks me, for example, "do you think my cunning plan will work?", and I'm not sure of the answer, can I just respond with かしら? It feels unlikely to me.

Unrelated, but I also have no idea how ご存知 works in this phrase.


These かしら are meaningless except that they add some rhythm. This pattern is known as 三三七拍子. Note that those shadow girls talk fairly theatrically, playing the role similar to western clowns (video), so they don't have to speak normally. In English, maybe something like "sing-a-ling-a-ling" or "see you later alligator" is somewhat close to this.

ご存じかしら literally means "(I wonder,) Do you know?", not "Do you know what I wonder?" But when translating a catchphrase like this, rhythm is more important than the semantic fidelity, so I don't think the translator made a mistake.


mostly women use the word かしら when they are not sure about a certain thing. For example 今日は雨が降るかしら？ means i wonder if it rains today. Men would say 今日は雨が降るかな？ in the same situation, if men say かしら at the end of the sentence it sounds a bit weird. With regard to 「かしら、かしら。ご存知かしら？」 does not make any sense in terms of grammer. This is a particular phrase that author of this anime wants to add some unique feature to this particular character like cliche but as everyday conversation, this does not make sense at all.

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