How can I tell how much って is quoting?


When you use って, how do you differentiate who is part of the quote from who
made the quote? For example: 彼女はかわいいって/She said かわいい or 彼女はかわいいって/someone said
she's cute




As mentioned in the comments, if you are speaking and really want to
disambiguate you have a couple options, like moving the sentence constituents
around or using explicit quotes (although the latter only works in writing and
the former can sound awkward).

> かわいいって彼女は。。。

> 彼女は「可愛い」って

However, I think the real answer here - as sundowner mentioned - is context.
Assuming your native language is English, it's worth mentioning that you do
the same work all the time in English. If I say

> I told him that he couldn't drive home because I knew he was drunk

This sentence is ambiguous as whether I actually told the other person I knew
they were drunk. (I.E. did I say "you can't go home" because I knew they were
drunk, or "you can't go home because I know you're drunk"?) This ambiguity can
be resolved by adding context like `but didn't want to call him drunk` or
conversely `but he denied being drunk`; generally the idea is that if the
distinction is important it will be obvious from context, and if it's not
obvious it's either not important or you just have to ask.




As mentioned in the comments, if you are speaking and really want to
disambiguate you have a couple options, like moving the sentence constituents
around or using explicit quotes (although the latter only works in writing and
the former can sound awkward).

> かわいいって彼女は。。。

> 彼女は「可愛い」って

However, I think the real answer here - as sundowner mentioned - is context.
Assuming your native language is English, it's worth mentioning that you do
the same work all the time in English. If I say

> I told him that he couldn't drive home because I knew he was drunk

This sentence is ambiguous as whether I actually told the other person I knew
they were drunk. (I.E. did I say "you can't go home" because I knew they were
drunk, or "you can't go home because I know you're drunk"?) This ambiguity can
be resolved by adding context like `but didn't want to call him drunk` or
conversely `but he denied being drunk`; generally the idea is that if the
distinction is important it will be obvious from context, and if it's not
obvious it's either not important or you just have to ask.

