"Didn't know"
I was reading a book with a sentence that said "No sé ni cómo explicarle esto" and I have seen this use of "No sabía ni.." before and I don't know why you wouldn't just write "No sabía cómo explicar esto" or "No sabía que pensar." Can someone explain, thanks!
4 Answers
"No sé ni" sounds to me like "I don't even know." Perhaps it is a variation or a colloquial form of "Ni siquiera sé."
I'm just a learner, and this is just a speculation, so please wait for one of our native speakers / advanced learners to comment 
I am a knight that says "Ni". It serves well when assaulting castles of French taunters but doesn't bother Spanish inquisitors.
After all, isn't this site for Spanish inquisitions?
No sabía cómo explicarlo. I didn't know how to explain.it
No sabía ni cómo explicarlo. I didn't even know how to explain. it
No sabía qué pensar. I didn't know what to think.
No sabía ni qué pensar. I didn't evenknow what to think.
I was reading a book with a sentence that said "No sé ni cómo explicarle esto" and I have seen this use of "No sabía ni.." before and I don't know why you wouldn't just write "No sabía cómo explicar esto" or "No sabía que pensar." Can someone explain, thanks!
Ni is a neat little Spanish word that is often used along with no, but gives a sentence a greater sense of nothingness than a simple "no" would give.
No tengo idea.
I have no idea.
No tengo ni idea.
I don't even know.
I don't have the slightest idea.
Also, what is written with sé is in the present tense while sabía is the past imperfect tense. Without additional context is not easy so say why sabía wasn't used if the rest of the text was in the past tense. An educated guess would be that the author was trying to emphasize the he still doesn't have - to this day - the slightest idea of how to explain it.
why you wouldn't just write "No sabía cómo explicar esto" or "No sabía que pensar."
Wouldn't the world be more boring if everybody thought and wrote the same way?
By the way...No sabía que pensar... is incorrect.
This would be translated as I didn't know that think.
If you mean "I didn't know what to think" you should add a "lo" No sabía lo que pensar.
Or add an accent to qué to turn que (that) into qué (what?)
No sabía qué pensar. (but I prefer the version with lo que)
