"We do not want to age either."
Translation:Stárnout nechceme ani my.
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1040
Without “my” the word “ani” would have nothing to refer to. The English “either” makes a distinction between “we” and somebody else who does not want to age. So there is an emphasis (or opposition) on “we.”
You're absolutely right about that, and it's true of A LOT of these sentences. Without context, it's awfully difficult for us to know what is in the "speaker's" head. Also, sometimes someone says that emphasized words tend to be placed at the end of a sentence, then at another time someone else says that XXX is at the beginning of the sentence for emphasis. Those two statements may not be mutually exclusive, in terms of Czech grammar and word order, but it IS very confusing when you're your're trying to learn the language and your head is about to explode! :-)
You put "ani" (or "i" in positive sentences) directly before whatever you want to emphasize.
- "Také nechceme stárnout" is ambiguous.
- "Stárnout nechceme ani my" or "Ani my nechceme stárnout" is solely the first meaning.
- "Nechceme ani stárnout" or "Ani stárnout nechceme" is solely the second meaning.
- "Ani nechceme stárnout" is yet another meaning -- "We don't even want to age." or it could be the second meaning again, as well.
I wrote: Nechceme ani stárnout. This was not accepted - and that was too bad for me since I was doing an unsupported level of lesson -LOL. But here you offer it as a possible sentence, so is my sentence actually wrong, or just awkward, or does it for some reason need "my", or should I just let this sentence age gracefully? :-)
The question is -- should it be accepted? It's an unlikely meaning. And whenever someone enters "Nechceme ani stárnout" and it will be accepted, they might be easily misled into believing that that's how you say "Even we don't want to age", when it actually only means the unlikely "We don't even want to age in addition to not wanting something else."
Yes, placing "ani" before "stárnout" emphasizes that:
- We don't even want to get older, let alone die. - Nechceme ani stárnout, natož umřít.
- We don't want to get younger, and we don't want to get older either. - Nechceme mládnout a nechceme ani stárnout.
Or another example:
- Nechci lízátko! Nechci ani zmrzlinu! - I don't want a lollipop! I don't want ice cream either!
- Matěj nechce zmrzlinu. Ani já nechci zmrzlinu. (or: Zmzrlinu nechci ani já.) - Matěj doesn't want ice cream. I don't want ice cream either. (can be same in English as in the previous example)
- Zmrzlinu? Zmrzlinu ani nechci. - I'm not really in the mood for ice cream. (This one a little shifted from the literal "not even want" meaning.)
1040
Wasn't a similar topic discussed two months ago, and AgnusDinas wrote:
- "Nechceme ani stárnout" or "Ani stárnout nechceme" is solely the second meaning [= don't want to age, in addition to other things we don't want]
I think "emphasis" here is with respect to other parts of the same sentence (such as "we"), not with respect to similar but alternative sentences.