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My favorite example of one of the difficulties of learning English comes from my friend who's an adult ESL teacher. Multiple adjectives always have to be in th
by cecilpl2 5y ago
My favorite example of one of the difficulties of learning English comes from my friend who's an adult ESL teacher.
Multiple adjectives always have to be in the order: opinion, size, age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose.
You can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife, or a beautiful big new oval blue nylon sleeping bag. Those sound completely natural and intuitive, but any tweak to the order just sounds "wrong" to a native speaker. Try it!
If you have a "cardboard brown box", it sounds like the box is the color "cardboard-brown"! If you have an old little knife, it sounds like "little knife" is the kind of knife it is! Other tweaks change the implied meaning in a way that is completely opaque to a non-native speaker.
Why can't you have a "green rectangular French old silver little whittling lovely knife"?
- thethought 5y agoThank you for this. I did try a few combinations and it does sound funny in my head. Wondering how this ordering evolved for a non-native speaker like me. I did not hear or know about this rule.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agoThat word order this is not a hard and fast rule doesn't stick out at all if it's shifted.
- PartiallyTyped 5y agoThere are relationships that arise when you change the order, e.g. nylon blue sounds as if it's a shade of blue, but not a nylon that is some shade of blue. However, I don't believe it is opague to a non-native speaker who has sufficient experience with the language.