Sentence to translate is: It is only my elder brother who reads French.

a) Furansugo o yomu no wa ani dake desu.

b) Furansugo o yomu no wa ani sika imasen.

Context is important as well as the implied meanings.

Taken from the DBJG on しか.

1) Dake expresses a similar idea. However, dake and shika differ in the following ways:

A) X shika emphasizes the negative proposition of 'non-X' while X dake merely describes the situation in neutral fashion.

B) shika only occurs with negative predicates; whereas dake can occur with affirmative predicates. See following examples:
[1] a) ボブだけ来た - Only Bob came.
b) ボブしか来なかった. - Nobody but Bob came.

[2] a) ボブだけ来なかった. Only bob didn't come.
*b) ボブしか　来た/来なくかなった. Everbody but Bob came.

* is an awkward sentence construction in Japanese.

Furansugo ga yomeru (koto/no) wa ani dake desu.

That English sentence doesn't sound all that good either there

DrJones Wrote:Furansugo ga yomeru (koto/no) wa ani dake desu.

If you're trying to say both 'koto' and 'no' are acceptable here, only 'no' is.

Stansfield123 Wrote:That English sentence doesn't sound all that good either there

Translating natural English into unnatural Japanese would just build bad habits, better avoid it by translating unnatural English. Beginners should translate Google Translate English back into Japanese, intermediates could translate manga scanlations...

A lot of the sentences in my textbook sound strange, but their purpose is to test your grasp of the grammar that has been presented.

My favorite sentence is the current lesson is this one: (translate into Japanese):

"It is only the third bottle from the left that does not have poison in it."

I actually got that one correct...last year, I couldn't do it but this year I'm working through the book a second time and I'm finding I'm pretty much getting them 90% of the time.

This lesson introduces how to translate "only" as well as the use of ordinal numbers. Of course, you also have to draw on what you learned in previous lessons (e.g., attributive phrases).