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The English language is a nonsense. For example, “Black box”: In French this would be called a “boîte noire” or literally a “box black”. This seems more logic

by jpswade 12y ago

The English language is a nonsense. For example, “Black box”: In French this would be called a “boîte noire” or literally a “box black”. This seems more logical as first you identify that it is a box you are looking for, secondly that it is black.

lelag 12y ago
It's a strange choice to choose the french language as a example over this matter when it's even worse. Adjectives can be placed in front or after a word and you also have to guess instinctively which is right. Ex : "Un grand homme" (a great man) "Un homme grand" (a tall man) Both are valid but don't mean the same thing. Source : I'm french.
- jpswade 12y ago
  My example used literal translations, so for example: https://translate.google.com/#auto/fr/a%20great%20man https://translate.google.com/#auto/fr/a%20great%20man a great man => un grand homme https://translate.google.com/#auto/fr/a%20tall%20man https://translate.google.com/#auto/fr/a%20tall%20man a tall man => un grand homme In both of these examples, the ordering is the same as English. So yes by that logic, you're right, French is equal to or worse than English.
- MBCook 12y ago
  > and you also have to guess instinctively which is right When I was learning French in school I was taught that the adjectives that go before nouns are the BANGS adjectives: Beauty Age Number Goodness Size. So words like tall, big , small, young old, or many are put before the noun while things like color go after. I'm sure there are counter examples (I only took French for a few years) but it seemed to work very well as a rule of thumb for guessing if you didn't know.
GarvielLoken 12y ago
Yeah! I found the article a bit shallow since it only discussed English like forms. Spanish has the same things "perro Grande" <==> "Dog Big". And has adjective bending forms on nouns, "perrito" <==> "small dog", "cafecito" <==> "little coffe". Disclaimer, I am only learning Spanish, not native speaker.

by jpswade 12y ago

lelag 12y ago

It's a strange choice to choose the french language as a example over this matter when it's even worse. Adjectives can be placed in front or after a word and you also have to guess instinctively which is right. Ex : "Un grand homme" (a great man) "Un homme grand" (a tall man) Both are valid but don't mean the same thing. Source : I'm french.

jpswade 12y ago
My example used literal translations, so for example: https://translate.google.com/#auto/fr/a%20great%20man https://translate.google.com/#auto/fr/a%20great%20man a great man => un grand homme https://translate.google.com/#auto/fr/a%20tall%20man https://translate.google.com/#auto/fr/a%20tall%20man a tall man => un grand homme In both of these examples, the ordering is the same as English. So yes by that logic, you're right, French is equal to or worse than English.
MBCook 12y ago
> and you also have to guess instinctively which is right When I was learning French in school I was taught that the adjectives that go before nouns are the BANGS adjectives: Beauty Age Number Goodness Size. So words like tall, big , small, young old, or many are put before the noun while things like color go after. I'm sure there are counter examples (I only took French for a few years) but it seemed to work very well as a rule of thumb for guessing if you didn't know.

GarvielLoken 12y ago

Yeah! I found the article a bit shallow since it only discussed English like forms. Spanish has the same things "perro Grande" <==> "Dog Big". And has adjective bending forms on nouns, "perrito" <==> "small dog", "cafecito" <==> "little coffe". Disclaimer, I am only learning Spanish, not native speaker.