The DU Lounge
Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsWhy do we place adjectives in a certain order?
It sounds normal to say "The big, blue sky." but "The blue, big sky." doesn't.
"The faint, red mark on her forehead." instead of "The red, faint mark on her forehead.".
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,267 posts)Glorfindel
(9,706 posts)"The hideous, towering, ancient, rugose, purplish, extraterrestrial, murdering monster rose high above his writhing victims." Sounds positively Lovecraftian, doesn't it?
Kaleva
(36,145 posts)dhol82
(9,351 posts)I am not a grammarian and can be proved wrong.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,267 posts)dhol82
(9,351 posts)Thank you.
Now I can trot it out when presented with this question.
Sophia4
(3,515 posts)Depends on the effect you want to make with your words.
It may be a rule, but it is more of a convention. Breaking grammar rules can be useful in writing and speaking if you know what you are doing.
Poetry for example.
Slogans for example.
Sometimes you don't want your sentence to sound "natural" or like someone else's sentence.
So it's a rule but on occasion made to be broken.
sl8
(13,584 posts)From http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160908-the-language-rules-we-know-but-dont-know-we-know
By Mark Forsyth
8 September 2016
Over the weekend, I happened to go viral. Or rather a single paragraph from a book I wrote called The Elements of Eloquence went viral. The guilty paragraph went like this:
Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest youll sound like a maniac. Its an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out.
BBC Cultures editor Matthew Anderson tweeted a passage from Mark Forsyths The Elements of Eloquence and it went viral (Credit: Matthew Anderson)
English speakers love to learn this sort of thing for two reasons. First, it astonishes us that there are rules that we didnt know that we knew. Thats rather peculiar, and rather exciting. Were all quite a lot cleverer than we think we are. And theres the shock of realising that theres a reason there may be little green men on Mars, but there certainly arent green little men. Second, you can spend the next hour of your life trying to think of exceptions, which is useful as it keeps you from doing something foolish like working.
Actually, there are a couple of small exceptions. Little Red Riding Hood may be perfectly ordered, but the Big Bad Wolf seems to be breaking all the laws of linguistics. Why does Bad Big Wolf sound so very, very wrong? What happened to the rules?
...
More at link.
Iggo
(47,486 posts)I didn't know that I knew!
Kaleva
(36,145 posts)The Velveteen Ocelot
(115,267 posts)1a) en liten, ny bil
1b) en ny, liten bil
2a) en ny, fransk bil
*2b) en fransk, ny bil
I can accept both 1a) and 1b) as grammatical, but 2b) sounds weird. I would always separate adjectives with a comma (or with og, depending on the context).
These examples would translate as a little, new car; a new, little car; a new, French car; and a French, new car. It is suggested here that the last example, "a French, new car," doesn't sound right.
I'm not sure about German. Both of these languages, unlike English, alter adjective endings to go with the nouns they modify, which complicates the issue a bit.