"Pienso si puedo estar...."

"Pienso si puedo estar...."
 

I have been trying to read the comics in Spanish every day. In Garfield today there is the following phrase: "Pienso si puedo estar serio por un momento..." I understand the meaning of the whole comic strip (link below) ... but don't quite understand the significance of the "si" in the first frame. An explanation would be appreciated! :)

http://www.gocomics.com/features/233...e_items/426948

la frase debiera ser: Pienso que sí puedo estar serio por un momento...

Esta mejor. Que me dices?

doesn't si mean if?

@Jessica - that's what I thought, but if you read the whole comic through, it can't mean "if".

@Hernán - me alegro que tú lo dijiste. Eso es lo que yo pensaba. :)

"I wonder if I may be serious for a moment" was the original.

The idea in Spanish about "pienso si puedo estar serio por un momento" is that I'm considering if I can stay serious for a moment.

:)

Debe estar mal traducido. Debería ser: "Me pregunto si podría estar serio un momento"

Oh!!! That makes so much sense. So let me ask this: is this a phrase that could be used like this: I'm in my classroom and joking a bit with my students, but I need to get serious about something, so I ask the rhetorical question: "pieso si puedo estar serio por un momento?". Is this correct?

Tienes razón Angelica. Leí muy rápido...

Is it I wonder, so the conditional si is used. :-)

Sorry laepelba. But I hope you see the punctuation I used, though...which wasn't in the comic, but still I think it could be used in that context.

IOW, still useful. :)

@Lou Ann: I somehow agree with irmamar that the sentence is a bit forced, so I wouldn't recommend you to copy the structure.

In this case "me pregunto..." as it's been suggested, or "¿será que puedo estar seria un momento?" would be much better. ;)

Thanks for the input, everyone! This really helps a lot. :)