"Známe ji jen my."

Translation: Only we know her.

[imaldastar]

what is the difference between "only we know her" and "we only know her?" if "známe ji jen my" means we are the only ones who know her, how would you say that she is the only one we know? a proč prosím :)

[VladaFu]

If she is the only one we know we would say "Známe jen ji." so that the "jen" belongs to "ji" so it means "only her".

In the sentence above the "jen" belongs to "my", so it means "only us".

[Dlehrke]

Yeah but in English, 'We only know her' is ambiguous and can mean we are the only one's that know her as well as she is the only one that we know. So it should be accepted also.

[svrsheque]

not that ambiguous per:

If the subject is the focus, we put only in front position.

ETA: on the other hand, we recognize the effects of czech sentence intonation on acceptable translations all the time, so we should consider the four-way ambiguity of John only phoned Mary today. i did add the translations.

[BoneheadBass]

This is interesting! In the example of John only phoned Mary today, I would instinctively understand it with the "emphasis" on today -- and I couldn't possibly say why. The other options are clearly there, though they don't immediately leap out at me when just seeing the written sentence. Curious what the brain does sometimes...

[Galahadique]

Doesn't the male audition sound strange? Like "znám jen my". For me it seems so

[AgnusOinas]

I hear it as "Známe j jen my", the /i/ in "ji" is almost gone, and the intonation of the whole sentence is weird. I have disabled the male voice for this exercise.