I have a text in my learning materials as follows:
彼ら は 自分 の 事 しか 考えて いません。
Its translation is apparently "they only think of themselves".
Now it all makes sense to me until the ません at the end. To my mind it negates the entire sentence. So it means that they DON'T only think for themselves. However, obviously that isn't the case.
If anyone could clear this up, or give me resource for it, that would be amazing. My Japanese level is elementary at the moment.
[NEG VERB]
not translate well into English. – Eiríkr Útlendi Nov 21 '19 at 18:10Just as the "a / the" distinction, grammatical number, or gender cannot be translated well into Japanese, so too do things like しか...[NEG VERB] not translate well into English
I disagree. I think しか〜ません translates perfectly into English. 彼らは ("They"), 考えていません ("do not think (of)"), 自分の事しか ("(anything) but themselves"). – istrasci Nov 21 '19 at 18:25[NEG VERB]
I should have added "not always translate well". (Some things just flat don't translate, like the は・が distinction, contrastive は, subtleties in semantic transitivity in 他動詞 vs. syntactic transitivity in English "transitives", etc.). – Eiríkr Útlendi Nov 21 '19 at 18:51