sentence structure

Question

(i have a friend whose american descent but can speak more than four language)

 

does the sentence structure looked good ?

Answer 1

Well, no.  first, in the first half of the sentence can you notice where a word might be missing?  I think you are using "whose" to mean "who is."  Don't do that, since "whose" is not a contraction of "who is".  

 

If we are just commenting on the sentence you gave, the rest is okay except for capitalization you need to check.'  Also, is English one of the four, or do you mean languages other than English?

 

But depending on what you are being asked to do we might need to analyze the sentence a bit more.  The sentence implies that people of "America descent'  do not usually speak four languages or that it would be surprising if an American spoke that many languages or that there is something about being American that would normally prevent one from speaking four languages.  If I were reading this sentence in an essay i would ask for clarification.  I would also ask what "American descent" means.  Most historians and anthropologists feel that, culturally and ethnically, there is no ethnic group called American UNLESS you are talking about native Americans or First peoples.  (And to all you teachers out there reading this, yes I know that this too is debated and may be changing)  Even then you might be asked to sepcify what native group you are talking about. 

Answer 2

Larry V. has given you an excellent account of the major problems with your sentence. I'd just like to add a couple of observations of less importance:

• If against Larry's good advice you keep the phrase American descent, the full form of the idiom is be of [nationality adjective] descent, e.g., is of German descent, are of Irish descent.
• Larry is also completely right about your sentence casting aspersions on the language-learning proclivities of natives of the United States, but I think that is all made explicit just by your use of but.
• And since the noun language in the meaning you use it here is countable--as signaled by the very fact that you use the number word four before it--the plural form languages is needed.