| Цитата (Ляська @ 20.02.2008 - 19:12) |
| Tathy Disagree. Speaking language doesn't really mean knowing it. One's language can be picked up "from the street" and considered acceptable by certain group of people, however by no means the language of this person can be considered truly academic. Academic language demands the broad knowledge of words, language structures, and concepts. Shall I go into more details now? |
You definitely shouldn't
The point is that you have corrected your mistake yourself, without my assistance - one indeed gets the knowledge of "words, language structures, and concepts"© but not of the language itself. No matter how person learns the language, after all he/she knows not the language, he/she knows how to speak it. To sum up, you have two possible variants: "I speak English" and "I know how to speak English". Both variants are correct grammatically and under the matter of word usage, the second one though is of rude style, no native speaker would ever use that phrase.You see, two higher education in linguistics, BEC Higher and continuous communication with native speakers (speakers of fine dictionary English, not broken or pigeon) allows me to be dead sure of the ostensible truth of my statement
Besides it's one of the frequent questions in various English tests on word usage, for example:
Fill in the gaps choosing the words from the list below. There is only one variant correct for every sentence:
My sister have been learning German since she was 10, now she ... it pretty well.
1) says
2) knows
3) speaks
4) tells
Hopefully now it's needless to tell you that the only correct variant here is #3
Anyway lectures of such themes are of little interest for other posters who come here to converse with each other. Therefore I suggest using private message inbox in case you have any further questions