3 ms·

Ok, so that was a bad example. What about order of adjectives, do people in the UK bother about that? Like a red metal big ball, or a big red metal ball?

mkl 6y ago
Yes, the adjective order is definitely important (and native English speakers are not explicitly taught it, but we absolutely know it).
- thaumasiotes 6y ago
  "Important" is dramatically overstating it. I've only ever seen anyone remark on adjective order in an ESL class. English is full of ordering constraints that matter. This isn't one of them; if you put your adjectives in a strange order, the worst thing that can happen is that people realize you're foreign. [1] And the odds are they knew that anyway, unless you managed to learn perfect pronunciation without absorbing common speech patterns. [1] They may not even notice. ESL classes treat adjective order as a big deal, but native speakers will often violate the normal constraints if they have to string together several adjectives in a row. You're most likely to be noticed if you put exactly two adjectives in the unconventional order.
  - bckr 6y ago
    This isn't even to take into account that we flub our speech (not to mention writing) all the time. It's easy to imagine someone saying "red... Metal... Big ball!" because that was the order that the features of the ball arrived in their mind. So there's a difference between planned speech and rushed speech, and there's piecing together what someone means through their mistakes. For another example, last night I was watching some Zoom comedy [0] and one of the comedians twice fumbled their joke, saying a word that was important to the punchline too early. So they abandoned the joke and moved on. Inferring what had happened was fairly natural, but you really had to have a robust (as in, fail-safe) grasp of English and, I suppose, culture, to roll with it. [0] https://www.eventbrite.com/o/best-of-san-francisco-stand-up-comedy-6560595937 https://www.eventbrite.com/o/best-of-san-francisco-stand-up-...
    - thaumasiotes 6y ago
      > This isn't even to take into account that we flub our speech (not to mention writing) all the time. It's easy to imagine someone saying "red... Metal... Big ball!" because that was the order that the features of the ball arrived in their mind. Well, I meant to; this is what I had in mind when I said "native speakers will often violate the normal constraints if they have to string together several adjectives in a row".
kwhitefoot 6y ago
> What about order of adjectives, do people in the UK bother Yes. Usually size comes first: big red metal ball. red big metal ball sounds wrong to me and so do metal red ball and red metal big ball. But I'm not sure if it can be succinctly expressed as a general rule. It's just something that native speakers do without thinking, seeing it written in the wrong order or hearing it said in the wrong order just feels wrong to me. Perhaps a linguist could provide a rule, or at least a rule of thumb.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Pinker's written about this I know. The order looks something like this https://www.hip-books.com/teachers/writing-about-reading/adjectives/ https://www.hip-books.com/teachers/writing-about-reading/adj... (although there are exceptions, of course!)
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    Thank you!

mkl 6y ago

Yes, the adjective order is definitely important (and native English speakers are not explicitly taught it, but we absolutely know it).

thaumasiotes 6y ago
"Important" is dramatically overstating it. I've only ever seen anyone remark on adjective order in an ESL class. English is full of ordering constraints that matter. This isn't one of them; if you put your adjectives in a strange order, the worst thing that can happen is that people realize you're foreign. [1] And the odds are they knew that anyway, unless you managed to learn perfect pronunciation without absorbing common speech patterns. [1] They may not even notice. ESL classes treat adjective order as a big deal, but native speakers will often violate the normal constraints if they have to string together several adjectives in a row. You're most likely to be noticed if you put exactly two adjectives in the unconventional order.
- bckr 6y ago
  This isn't even to take into account that we flub our speech (not to mention writing) all the time. It's easy to imagine someone saying "red... Metal... Big ball!" because that was the order that the features of the ball arrived in their mind. So there's a difference between planned speech and rushed speech, and there's piecing together what someone means through their mistakes. For another example, last night I was watching some Zoom comedy [0] and one of the comedians twice fumbled their joke, saying a word that was important to the punchline too early. So they abandoned the joke and moved on. Inferring what had happened was fairly natural, but you really had to have a robust (as in, fail-safe) grasp of English and, I suppose, culture, to roll with it. [0] https://www.eventbrite.com/o/best-of-san-francisco-stand-up-comedy-6560595937 https://www.eventbrite.com/o/best-of-san-francisco-stand-up-...
  - thaumasiotes 6y ago
    > This isn't even to take into account that we flub our speech (not to mention writing) all the time. It's easy to imagine someone saying "red... Metal... Big ball!" because that was the order that the features of the ball arrived in their mind. Well, I meant to; this is what I had in mind when I said "native speakers will often violate the normal constraints if they have to string together several adjectives in a row".

kwhitefoot 6y ago

> What about order of adjectives, do people in the UK bother Yes. Usually size comes first: big red metal ball. red big metal ball sounds wrong to me and so do metal red ball and red metal big ball. But I'm not sure if it can be succinctly expressed as a general rule. It's just something that native speakers do without thinking, seeing it written in the wrong order or hearing it said in the wrong order just feels wrong to me. Perhaps a linguist could provide a rule, or at least a rule of thumb.

ghaff 6y ago
Pinker's written about this I know. The order looks something like this https://www.hip-books.com/teachers/writing-about-reading/adjectives/ https://www.hip-books.com/teachers/writing-about-reading/adj... (although there are exceptions, of course!)
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  Thank you!