WORD ORDER 4

 

How you say this in Polish?

 

Along with 'how to say', 'how to say it' and other typical sentences I get when asked about what is the best way to express something in a language that the speaker is not familiar with.

 

And it's not only with the Polish languageI really wasn't sure what was the best category for this one, but I'm surprised at myself as to who long it's taken to get this typical error into my list.

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As a general rule - there are exceptions when it comes to emphasis, but this would be an exception too far for the above example - the verb phrase should be together with its object. To speak is the verb phrase, and English is the object, and so these should be together: It's difficult to speak English all the time. To speak English well. If you say 'well English', this might suggest that 'well' is an adjective, and so it becomes a type of English! 'Well' in this sentence is being used as an adverb, and so should go at the end.

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However, if you really want to stress the fact that speaking English all the time is difficult, then you could write It's difficult to speak - all the time - English! (When speaking it, you'd have to add pauses where the dashes are to get the same effect.) You could do the same for the second example with commas: to speak, well, English, but it would be best to put well at the end of the sentence because - if we place it before the word English - it takes the meaning I'm sorry to say, such as in this example:

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"I speak Engleesh little. Francais speak?" 

"Well, sorry sir, you'll have to speak, well, English. Sorry about that."

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But you can also say 'And to speak good English' as 'good' is clearly an adjective. To say 'speak English good' is often considered as incorrect English in writing, so I would advise not using it for that. (But speaking is okay.)

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