United States Boundary [USB]

[Guest]

hi - and welcome!

I am a Dutchman living near the German border and speak fluent English and German and of course Dutch. Planning to move to the USA soon and live overthere. Thought this would be the ideal guild with the multilingual exercising for everyone.




Speektown

[Guest]

im an american living in the U.S i speak perfect english and some spanish

shouldn't it be "i speak perfectly english"?
hi, care-taker - we will meet soon

Care-Taker is alright...
"I speak english", English here is a noun, denoting the name of a language. TO add the word perfect before it is to provide a pronoun, i.e., a quality of the noun, i.e., the english he speaks is perfect.

Alternatively, he could have said that "I speak english perfectly"
Here, 'speak' is a verb, i.e. it denotes action (the action of speaking) and thus the use of the present form 'perfectly' is appropriate as perfect is a proverb, i.e., the quality of speaking.

Pardon me, my knowledge of english grammar terms is a little poor. I never really memorised all that in school, only noted correct usage

A pronoun a pro-form that substitutes for a noun...
ie.
John gave the keys to Alice.
here John, keys and Alice are nouns

We can substitute those for pronouns:
He gave it to her.

He, it and her being the pronouns

Care-Taker's 'Perfect' was used as an adjective
An adjective's role is to describe a noun/pronoun.

eg.
That is an old man
This is a tall building
The cow is beautiful and intelligent

So, saying "I speak perfect English" is a good use of an adjective, to describe his English.

PK's second example "I speak english perfectly" is a good example of the use of an adverb

What is an adverb?
An adverb is a word to describe a certain action (verb).

Adverbs describe verbs as adjectives describe nouns.

ie.
He ate fast
She jumped high
He read the note accurately

*underlined are verbs
*bolded are adverbs

A proverb... is a saying based on common sense and tested knowledge.

ie.
A chain is only as strong as its weakest link
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you
Don't bite the hand that feeds you

Please correct me if i'm wrong on any count, hope this helps. Cheers!

[Guest]

lol.... I mentioned I'm a bit hazy on the terms But I meant the correct usage. And a big thanks to Jacob for the correction

[Guest]

Hehe, yeap. The usage and descriptions were correct, I was just helping out with the terms for them

Cheers!