confused wi the use of "nai"

[urbanegloss2037]

pardon the romaji...

in the sentence:

Gakkou ni ika nai to.
gotta go to school.

as far as I'm concerned, the "nai" means there isn't; doesn't have and can't do,not

but in sentence above it means like "gotta"

shouldn't it be " I don't want to go to school"?


*confused* help appreciated.

[Javizy]

~nai to ikenai means 'got/have to', but ikenai can be omitted when the context is clear. It's the same with the similar expressions ~nakereba naranai, ~nakute wa naranai and their variations.

[j_bertoni2279]

Yes, Japanese seems to have a lot of dropped verbs, etc. Drives me crazy sometimes.