Reason for 「のか」 and 「かもしれません」 in 「何を言っているのかわからないかもしれませんけど」


One time I was formulating sentences on a website, to practice my Japanese and
get natives to correct them. I had written 「何が言ってわかりませんけど」 which I now
understand was wrong, but when they corrected my sentence with this
「何を言っているのかわからないかもしれませんけど」 I was shocked.

Most of the sentence I understand, like changing 「が」 to 「を」 but when I got to
「のか」 and 「かもしれません」 I was deeply confused and to be honest, never seen 「のか」
used in a sentence. If it’s not too much trouble, could someone explain the
use of these two parts in the sentence and why they are needed to make this
sentence?

Thank you.

Edit: Because I forgot to put the whole sentence to clarify who the speaker/
topic is, here it is:「私は何を言っているのかわからないかもしれませんけど、今は日本語を練習をしてます。」




The other answers do a reasonable job of breaking things down, but I wanted to
make a comment on why 「かもしれません」 was added by a native speaker even though the
version without it is perfectly grammatical.

If you look at the final, full, sentence:

> 何を言っているのかわからないかもしれませんけど、今は日本語の練習をしてます。

The subject of 言う is pretty clearly "I" and the subject of わかる is pretty
clearly "you".

If you were to say

> 何を言っているのかわからないけど、今は日本語の練習をしてます。

it would be like saying either "Even though I don't understand what I'm
saying, right now I'm practicing my Japanese." which sounds silly, or "Even
though you don't/won't understand what I'm saying, right now I'm practicing my
Japanese.", which, although you are trying to be humble, just comes off a
little odd even in the English.

> 何を言っているのかわからないかもしれませんけど、今は日本語の練習をしてます。

on the other hand is like "Even though you may not understand what I'm saying,
right now I'm practicing my Japanese.", which

  1. disambiguates the subject of わかる
  2. feels like a standard way to be humble about your abilities because you don't assume anything about the other person

