Opinion Size Age Shape Colour Origin Material Purpose Noun
September 11, 2016 8:53 AM Subscribe
Matthew Anderson of the BBC tweeted a paragraph from the 2013 book The Elements of Eloquence detailing the order of adjectives in English and calling it a thing "English speakers know, but don't know we know". It went viral, with outlets from NPR to Good Housekeeping covering the story and the rule, while Quartz pointed out that this is a meticulously taught rule for non-native English speakers.
This is also known as the royal order of adjectives (which would be a great secret society).
The BBC notes that one famous exception, the Big Bad Wolf, actually follows another untaught rule, the rule of ablaut reduplication:
This is also known as the royal order of adjectives (which would be a great secret society).
The BBC notes that one famous exception, the Big Bad Wolf, actually follows another untaught rule, the rule of ablaut reduplication:
Reduplication in linguistics is when you repeat a word, sometimes with an altered consonant (lovey-dovey, fuddy-duddy, nitty-gritty), and sometimes with an altered vowel: bish-bash-bosh, ding-dang-dong. If there are three words then the order has to go I, A, O. If there are two words then the first is I and the second is either A or O.
this is a meticulously taught rule for non-native English speakers.
As an ESL, I think I saw something more or less like this once, but it wasn't too remarked on. We usually got told that more concrete adjectives were closer to the noun.
posted by sukeban at 9:18 AM on September 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
As an ESL, I think I saw something more or less like this once, but it wasn't too remarked on. We usually got told that more concrete adjectives were closer to the noun.
posted by sukeban at 9:18 AM on September 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
Size often appears before opinion though. For example big ugly building sounds right; ugly big building doesn't. however ugly big green building DOES sound right, so I'd say there's a exception when opinion and size are the only two adjectives being used.
posted by eustacescrubb at 9:22 AM on September 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by eustacescrubb at 9:22 AM on September 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
Green great dragons can totally exist in English. Author is clearly not a gamer.
posted by yeolcoatl at 9:22 AM on September 11, 2016 [23 favorites]
posted by yeolcoatl at 9:22 AM on September 11, 2016 [23 favorites]
Someone should redo the Joni Mitchell song and sing it as "Yellow Big Taxi."
posted by eustacescrubb at 9:25 AM on September 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by eustacescrubb at 9:25 AM on September 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
Fun! So the example they give is:
lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife
opinion size age shape colour origin material purpose noun
I imagine there are lots of exceptions to this -- it's interesting to think if they're all phonetic/euphony based or if they're semantic. There are certainly some semantic ones where an adjective-noun combo has been welded in to a single unit, like "French toast" - you'd have "fortifying French toast" even though that puts the purpose outside the origin.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:25 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife
opinion size age shape colour origin material purpose noun
I imagine there are lots of exceptions to this -- it's interesting to think if they're all phonetic/euphony based or if they're semantic. There are certainly some semantic ones where an adjective-noun combo has been welded in to a single unit, like "French toast" - you'd have "fortifying French toast" even though that puts the purpose outside the origin.
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:25 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Mod note: Corrected book attribution, per OP request
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:27 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 9:27 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
In the French toast case, French is not an adjective. French toast is a variety of toast, and French and toast together comprise a noun.
I am not a linguist and I apologize for the somewhat garbled explanation.
posted by chrchr at 9:28 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
I am not a linguist and I apologize for the somewhat garbled explanation.
posted by chrchr at 9:28 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
I've never heard of adjective order before, so now I'm sounding my way through variations to see which sound right and which don't.
There are some where they can be switched, but with different emphasis. So "old fat man" and "fat old man" both work, but aren't entirely synonymous.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:34 AM on September 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
There are some where they can be switched, but with different emphasis. So "old fat man" and "fat old man" both work, but aren't entirely synonymous.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:34 AM on September 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
In the French toast case, French is not an adjective.
Ok, how about "whittling knife"?
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:40 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Ok, how about "whittling knife"?
posted by LobsterMitten at 9:40 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
The book's by Mark Forsyth, not Matthew Anderson.
The BBC that notes the famous exception is also Mark Forsyth. His book discusses ablaut reduplication in the paragraph after the one that was quoted on Twitter.
He's blogging over here, btw.
posted by effbot at 9:45 AM on September 11, 2016
The BBC that notes the famous exception is also Mark Forsyth. His book discusses ablaut reduplication in the paragraph after the one that was quoted on Twitter.
He's blogging over here, btw.
posted by effbot at 9:45 AM on September 11, 2016
In the French toast counter example above, I'd say "fortifying" is Opinion rather than Purpose, and the rule holds.
posted by notyou at 9:47 AM on September 11, 2016
posted by notyou at 9:47 AM on September 11, 2016
Size often appears before opinion though. For example big ugly building sounds right; ugly big building doesn't. however ugly big green building DOES sound right, so I'd say there's a exception when opinion and size are the only two adjectives being used.
From the "royal order of adjectives" link: In the example of the ugly burlap purse, the order again makes sense because we wouldn’t say a burlap ugly purse. Yet we might easily say a big old ugly purse. Why is that adjective order allowed?
Whether this exception comes from the use of big old ugly as a common unit rather than three separate adjectives or because ugly is being used as a type of purse, I can’t tell you. Yet I can remind you that there are exceptions to be aware of.
I personally think ugly is being used as a type here. (Not a linguist)
Ok, how about "whittling knife"?
Wouldn't whittling be its purpose?
posted by LizBoBiz at 9:51 AM on September 11, 2016
From the "royal order of adjectives" link: In the example of the ugly burlap purse, the order again makes sense because we wouldn’t say a burlap ugly purse. Yet we might easily say a big old ugly purse. Why is that adjective order allowed?
Whether this exception comes from the use of big old ugly as a common unit rather than three separate adjectives or because ugly is being used as a type of purse, I can’t tell you. Yet I can remind you that there are exceptions to be aware of.
I personally think ugly is being used as a type here. (Not a linguist)
Ok, how about "whittling knife"?
Wouldn't whittling be its purpose?
posted by LizBoBiz at 9:51 AM on September 11, 2016
Devotees of William Blake are forever indebted to Forsyth for his deep insights into their beloved poet, as well as poetry in general:
…to write essays on what William Blake thought about the Tiger; despite the fact that William Blake was a nut-job whose opinions, in a civilised society, would be of no interest to anybody apart from his parole officer. A poet is not somebody who has great thoughts. That is the menial duty of the philosopher. A poet is somebody who expresses his thoughts, however commonplace they may be, exquisitely. …posted by jamjam at 9:58 AM on September 11, 2016 [10 favorites]
"sourdough French toast" would break it, however. (Material before Origin.)
"breakfast French toast" would, too, maybe, as in the fortifying example. (Purpose before Origin)
But I guess it makes the most sense to regard French toast as a compound noun (adj+noun), and work back from there, adjective order-wise, in which case " sourdough breakfast French toast" ought to be the right order, but "breakfast sourdough French toast" sounds better to my ear.
posted by notyou at 10:09 AM on September 11, 2016
"breakfast French toast" would, too, maybe, as in the fortifying example. (Purpose before Origin)
But I guess it makes the most sense to regard French toast as a compound noun (adj+noun), and work back from there, adjective order-wise, in which case " sourdough breakfast French toast" ought to be the right order, but "breakfast sourdough French toast" sounds better to my ear.
posted by notyou at 10:09 AM on September 11, 2016
Adjectives of Order, a poem by Alexandra Teague
posted by omnomnOMINOUS at 10:11 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by omnomnOMINOUS at 10:11 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Material before Origin.
As in many of these cases, there's a decent argument to be made that "French toast" is atomic. You don't have toast which is both French and sourdough. You have French toast, made from sourdough bread.
posted by kenko at 10:11 AM on September 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
As in many of these cases, there's a decent argument to be made that "French toast" is atomic. You don't have toast which is both French and sourdough. You have French toast, made from sourdough bread.
posted by kenko at 10:11 AM on September 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
Maybe it's just that I'm mad about the example given, and maybe it's just that the example is so long that it becomes meaningless nonsense, but
lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife
doesn't even sound right to me to begin with, like maybe it's just such a long awkward string of adjectives contrived to be an example? With a few exceptions, it still sounds exactly the same to me however I change it around.
little old lovely green rectangular silver French whittling knife
That sounds the same to me as the "right" one. I can't change "little old", but to me that's not because of "adjective order", it's because "little old" is already commonly established cliche, like in "little old lady". And I can't change "whittling knife", but again it's not because of relative adjective order but because "whittling knife" is the kind of knife it is, not a minor cosmetic attribute. I would search Amazon for a whittling knife if I need to whittle, I would search for a green rectangular knife if I were a fusspot and whatever I already have that works perfectly fine isn't good enough for me for no real reason.
I am a native English speaker, I've studied but am not remotely fluent in several other Germanic and non-Germanic languages, I've taken general linguistics classes, and I just do not get this at all.
posted by elsilnora at 10:12 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife
doesn't even sound right to me to begin with, like maybe it's just such a long awkward string of adjectives contrived to be an example? With a few exceptions, it still sounds exactly the same to me however I change it around.
little old lovely green rectangular silver French whittling knife
That sounds the same to me as the "right" one. I can't change "little old", but to me that's not because of "adjective order", it's because "little old" is already commonly established cliche, like in "little old lady". And I can't change "whittling knife", but again it's not because of relative adjective order but because "whittling knife" is the kind of knife it is, not a minor cosmetic attribute. I would search Amazon for a whittling knife if I need to whittle, I would search for a green rectangular knife if I were a fusspot and whatever I already have that works perfectly fine isn't good enough for me for no real reason.
I am a native English speaker, I've studied but am not remotely fluent in several other Germanic and non-Germanic languages, I've taken general linguistics classes, and I just do not get this at all.
posted by elsilnora at 10:12 AM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Can I have pancakes instead
posted by beerperson at 10:13 AM on September 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by beerperson at 10:13 AM on September 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
Like this just comes off to me as some new, more insidious form of prescriptivism, because usually it's some busybody telling you your grammar is wrong, but now it's some busybody telling you how you're supposed to feel about it and that not only are you wrong for feeling differently about it, you're not even capable of feeling differently about it.
posted by elsilnora at 10:14 AM on September 11, 2016 [10 favorites]
posted by elsilnora at 10:14 AM on September 11, 2016 [10 favorites]
French toast is not something that most English speakers say is "a kind of toast". French is not a modifier to toast. French toast is something which has only an incidental bready affiliation to actual toast. If you separate them, then you're referring to regular toast made in France, maybe, but you aren't referring to French toast.
posted by Sequence at 10:15 AM on September 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by Sequence at 10:15 AM on September 11, 2016 [6 favorites]
French toast is a bad example, but you can sic in French wine or French cars or whatever and have the same effect.
posted by Dysk at 10:19 AM on September 11, 2016
posted by Dysk at 10:19 AM on September 11, 2016
I'd say it's closer to pancakes than to toast, yes. What a country!
posted by thelonius at 10:20 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by thelonius at 10:20 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
If French toast is confusing matters, we can leave it behind. Pick something else. Is every exception to this word order rule going to be a compound noun/molecule-made-atom? Like the examples of "fat old man" vs. "old fat man" (where "old man" and "fat man" are acting like compound nouns), or how "little old" should stay together?
And second question, maybe this order obtains because e.g. "purpose" adjectives are the most likely category to form a compound noun with (and therefore be inseparable from) their noun? Like "whittling knife" or "lock-picking kit" or "weight-loss drug" or whatever.
(FWIW I agree there are some word orders that are idiomatic/correct/ allowed, and that this is tacit knowledge of native speakers that's tricky for new learners to pick up. I'm just noodling to try to understand how rule-followy these idioms are.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:23 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
And second question, maybe this order obtains because e.g. "purpose" adjectives are the most likely category to form a compound noun with (and therefore be inseparable from) their noun? Like "whittling knife" or "lock-picking kit" or "weight-loss drug" or whatever.
(FWIW I agree there are some word orders that are idiomatic/correct/ allowed, and that this is tacit knowledge of native speakers that's tricky for new learners to pick up. I'm just noodling to try to understand how rule-followy these idioms are.)
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:23 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Elsilnora, I've found the example makes way more sense if you pull some adjectives out and see how the rest need to be arranged. Like a "lovely old French whittling knife" makes sense, as does a "lovely little rectangular knife" or a "green (steel) knife." (Silver, being a color as well as a material, is a horrible choice here.)
When you are lost in a sea of adjectives, the order seems less relevant. When there's only a few, the order matters a lot more.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 10:25 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
When you are lost in a sea of adjectives, the order seems less relevant. When there's only a few, the order matters a lot more.
posted by steady-state strawberry at 10:25 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Mark Liberman at Language Log has a great post about why the quote from the book isn't really accurate. Adjective order is much more complex than this.
For instance: It's always "big ugly", never "ugly big." Yet it's normally "beautiful little," but rarely "little beautiful."
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 10:27 AM on September 11, 2016 [24 favorites]
For instance: It's always "big ugly", never "ugly big." Yet it's normally "beautiful little," but rarely "little beautiful."
posted by a mirror and an encyclopedia at 10:27 AM on September 11, 2016 [24 favorites]
Hmm, this sounds like it comes from editors and writers, not linguists.
Whenever I hear a claim about syntax, I try to find counterexamples. That's what my syntax professor taught us. These sound fine to me: a British young man, a green little bug, a huge nasty lie, a big square box, a big enthusiastic man, a minuscule tasty snack, a plastic oblong container, a petite retired woman, a large cold beer, an old opinionated Mefite. The ancient, square, ugly altar. My Midwestern, old, cranky relatives.
Another sign of the non-linguist origin is calling "determiners" a kind of adjective. Syntacticians do say that a noun phrase has to have the order determiner + number + adjective + noun— it sounds just wrong to say "five the tables", "silly my friend", "two ugly John's feet".
posted by zompist at 10:42 AM on September 11, 2016 [7 favorites]
Whenever I hear a claim about syntax, I try to find counterexamples. That's what my syntax professor taught us. These sound fine to me: a British young man, a green little bug, a huge nasty lie, a big square box, a big enthusiastic man, a minuscule tasty snack, a plastic oblong container, a petite retired woman, a large cold beer, an old opinionated Mefite. The ancient, square, ugly altar. My Midwestern, old, cranky relatives.
Another sign of the non-linguist origin is calling "determiners" a kind of adjective. Syntacticians do say that a noun phrase has to have the order determiner + number + adjective + noun— it sounds just wrong to say "five the tables", "silly my friend", "two ugly John's feet".
posted by zompist at 10:42 AM on September 11, 2016 [7 favorites]
Huh. zompist, many of your examples sound awkward to me, or else the adjective is actually modifying another adjective rather than the known.
posted by Peach at 10:45 AM on September 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by Peach at 10:45 AM on September 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
there's a decent argument to be made that "French toast" is atomic.
Since France has a relatively high level of nuclear electricity generation, that's probably true.
posted by flabdablet at 10:49 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Since France has a relatively high level of nuclear electricity generation, that's probably true.
posted by flabdablet at 10:49 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
It wasn't like a big deal, but I (a non-native speaker) did remember my teacher spending half the class on this because she did it with a massive table on the board so it was at least fun.
But honestly it's not like we're super drilled into it or something because this went viral amongst my friends who had no recollection of this too. But honestly this feels like tht time with i took introductory programming with an American lecturer who was absolutely surprised when his majority-malaysian class could recite the BODMAS rule when resolving math formula.
posted by cendawanita at 11:01 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
But honestly it's not like we're super drilled into it or something because this went viral amongst my friends who had no recollection of this too. But honestly this feels like tht time with i took introductory programming with an American lecturer who was absolutely surprised when his majority-malaysian class could recite the BODMAS rule when resolving math formula.
posted by cendawanita at 11:01 AM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
a green little bug
this sounds odd to me
posted by thelonius at 11:01 AM on September 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
this sounds odd to me
posted by thelonius at 11:01 AM on September 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
I'm wondering right now if this tendency to pile on adjectives is more of a Germanic languages thing vs. a Romance languages thing -- we would use vocabulary and diminutives or augmentatives to prune a bunch of adjectives. For example, in Spanish a little old lady would be an ancianita, the big bad wolf is the Lobo Feroz ("fierce wolf"), Little Red Riding Hood is Caperucita Roja, and so on. Since adjectives can go before and after the noun, it also means that we don't agonize about grandes dragones verdes.
posted by sukeban at 11:04 AM on September 11, 2016
posted by sukeban at 11:04 AM on September 11, 2016
I don't think so, sukeban, at least that wasn't what I was taught in high school French. What I was taught roughly follows this page. Which adjectives go before/after the noun is (more or less) dependent on the sort of adjective involved, so instead you'd never say verdes dragones grandes. And nouns only have two sides (before/after) so you still have to worry about the order on each side; the "proximity to noun in French matches that in English" from the website above is what I was taught. But again this may be a teaching thing more than a language reality...
posted by nat at 11:16 AM on September 11, 2016
posted by nat at 11:16 AM on September 11, 2016
Which adjectives go before/after the noun is (more or less) dependent on the sort of adjective involved, so instead you'd never say verdes dragones grandes.
Neither in Spanish. It's complicated because adjective before noun is poetic language, but it is addressed in the link :) basically there's no way to have a difference between great green dragon and green great dragon in Spanish because they both translate to the same.
And nouns only have two sides (before/after) so you still have to worry about the order on each side;
The crucial part is that we would have fewer words to pile on because of vocab and suffixes, and adjectival pileons aren't done as often anyway.
(Not that there aren't more languages, I quoted Germanic and Romance because English and Spanish are my second and first languages respectively. I expect languages from other families would deal with this in many other different ways)
posted by sukeban at 11:24 AM on September 11, 2016
Neither in Spanish. It's complicated because adjective before noun is poetic language, but it is addressed in the link :) basically there's no way to have a difference between great green dragon and green great dragon in Spanish because they both translate to the same.
And nouns only have two sides (before/after) so you still have to worry about the order on each side;
The crucial part is that we would have fewer words to pile on because of vocab and suffixes, and adjectival pileons aren't done as often anyway.
(Not that there aren't more languages, I quoted Germanic and Romance because English and Spanish are my second and first languages respectively. I expect languages from other families would deal with this in many other different ways)
posted by sukeban at 11:24 AM on September 11, 2016
Context is pretty key. Are you shopping for ugly bags? Do you want a "big ugly bag?"
Are you shopping for big bags? Don't buy that one, it's an "ugly big bag."
posted by explosion at 11:28 AM on September 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
Are you shopping for big bags? Don't buy that one, it's an "ugly big bag."
posted by explosion at 11:28 AM on September 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
It feels like there is almost a general exception for variants of "big" coming first. What's up with that?
posted by atoxyl at 11:42 AM on September 11, 2016
posted by atoxyl at 11:42 AM on September 11, 2016
he dismantles the commonly held English spelling mantra “I before E except after C.” It’s used to help people remember how to spell words like “piece,” but, Forsyth says, there are only 44 words that follow the rule, and 923 that don’t. His prime examples? “Their,” “being,” and “eight.”
"I before E except before C
Or when sounded as A
As in 'neighbor' and 'weigh'."
Or so I learned in my American grammar school.
Which is not so say that there are not numerous exceptions (ancient, leisure), but perhaps not so many as he claims. And then, I suspect some exceptions may have originally been pronounced in keeping with the rule (weird, neither).
posted by BWA at 11:53 AM on September 11, 2016
"I before E except before C
Or when sounded as A
As in 'neighbor' and 'weigh'."
Or so I learned in my American grammar school.
Which is not so say that there are not numerous exceptions (ancient, leisure), but perhaps not so many as he claims. And then, I suspect some exceptions may have originally been pronounced in keeping with the rule (weird, neither).
posted by BWA at 11:53 AM on September 11, 2016
I before E except after C
We live in a weird society...
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:19 PM on September 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
We live in a weird society...
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:19 PM on September 11, 2016 [5 favorites]
My high school French teacher described this to us as "BAGS" - Beauty, Age, Goodness, Size.
It never occurred to me to wonder if there was a similar convention in English...
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:25 PM on September 11, 2016
It never occurred to me to wonder if there was a similar convention in English...
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:25 PM on September 11, 2016
There's an episode of QI I recall seeing where Stephen Fry claimed that the number of exceptions to the I-before-E rule exceeds the number of adherents. I suppose that could be wrong, or that QI could be using Forsyth as the research, but that's another data point, anyhow.
I don't know if this rule does always hold, but I think it matters more when you are in the strange situation of using 6-8 adjectival modifiers. The distance from the noun is less important when it's short, in other words. There are still constructs that sound strange to my (native) ear, but if they're short enough I don't have to work as hard to figure out what's meant. If you have 6 modifiers out front and they're in some tinny order, I have to reread to parse it properly.
The French toast example seems very much a compound noun to me. French is not its origin (I didn't get this toast from France), it's part of the noun itself. "Wheat French toast" and "French wheat toast" are two massively different things, as are "black French toast" and "French black toast" -- I picked example modifiers from either side of origin and neither make sense when separating 'french' from 'toast'. French and toast are together a compound noun.
posted by axiom at 1:12 PM on September 11, 2016
I don't know if this rule does always hold, but I think it matters more when you are in the strange situation of using 6-8 adjectival modifiers. The distance from the noun is less important when it's short, in other words. There are still constructs that sound strange to my (native) ear, but if they're short enough I don't have to work as hard to figure out what's meant. If you have 6 modifiers out front and they're in some tinny order, I have to reread to parse it properly.
The French toast example seems very much a compound noun to me. French is not its origin (I didn't get this toast from France), it's part of the noun itself. "Wheat French toast" and "French wheat toast" are two massively different things, as are "black French toast" and "French black toast" -- I picked example modifiers from either side of origin and neither make sense when separating 'french' from 'toast'. French and toast are together a compound noun.
posted by axiom at 1:12 PM on September 11, 2016
This is another one of those conversations that would be greatly improved by knowing where people learned English; it doesn't seem mad to think that nuances of what "sounds right" or common idioms might be different between speakers of e.g. British vs American vs Australian English.
posted by metaBugs at 1:18 PM on September 11, 2016
posted by metaBugs at 1:18 PM on September 11, 2016
In your best Groucho voice: "Time flies like an arrow but fruit flies like a banana..."
posted by jim in austin at 1:55 PM on September 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by jim in austin at 1:55 PM on September 11, 2016 [4 favorites]
French toast is a bad example, but you can sic in French wine or French cars or whatever and have the same effect.
"Sourdough French wine" … nope, doesn't work for me. And for "French wine" you want material or purpose to come before "French" and "wine" for a counterexample, right? "Dandelion French wine"? "Table French wine"? No, in both cases you'd say "French dandelion wine" or "French table wine".
posted by kenko at 2:15 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
"Sourdough French wine" … nope, doesn't work for me. And for "French wine" you want material or purpose to come before "French" and "wine" for a counterexample, right? "Dandelion French wine"? "Table French wine"? No, in both cases you'd say "French dandelion wine" or "French table wine".
posted by kenko at 2:15 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
One advantage of the Strunk White style is with one or none adjectives you don't have to bother with stupid rules like these.
posted by bukvich at 2:18 PM on September 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by bukvich at 2:18 PM on September 11, 2016 [8 favorites]
Greg Nog: Look, I'm just gonna come out and say it: I aint ever seen a frenchman whittle. sorry if this is racist
Yeah, they don't anymore. Cause the last time a Frenchman whittled we got rococo. Rococo chairs, rococo tables, rococo bidets, rococo chamberpots, rococo French letters. Rococo goddamn everywhere. Made everyone in France so angry they revolutionized everything and then Napoleoned the world in the face. So they don't anymore.
posted by Kattullus at 2:25 PM on September 11, 2016 [25 favorites]
Yeah, they don't anymore. Cause the last time a Frenchman whittled we got rococo. Rococo chairs, rococo tables, rococo bidets, rococo chamberpots, rococo French letters. Rococo goddamn everywhere. Made everyone in France so angry they revolutionized everything and then Napoleoned the world in the face. So they don't anymore.
posted by Kattullus at 2:25 PM on September 11, 2016 [25 favorites]
Like this just comes off to me as some new, more insidious form of prescriptivism, because usually it's some busybody telling you your grammar is wrong, but now it's some busybody telling you how you're supposed to feel about it and that not only are you wrong for feeling differently about it, you're not even capable of feeling differently about it.
Native speakers of English have an implicit knowledge about the preferred order of adjective types in a phrase containing more than one adjective. Thinking of it as a "rule" is misleading. More like a strong tendency, not something that's provable or disprovable like a geometric proof. If you asked five hundred native English speakers which arrangement of adjectives sounded better, you would find that the degree to which they all agreed with one another shows that it can't just be chance or preference... there is an underlying syntax there.
I would guess the main reason we don't hear more about order of adjectives is because prescriptivists actually aren't all that interested in it. It's useless as a shibboleth... native speakers never really mess it up, people don't tend to notice when they do, it varies little between dialects, and it's not a pithy enough rule to easily call someone out for violating. It might mark you as a non-native speaker, but criticizing a non-native speaker for this is basically admitting they're so fluent you're scraping the very bottom of the grammatical barrel trying to find fault with their speech.
The example with seven or eight adjectives sounds odd because it's pretty damn rare for a natural utterance to contain a noun phrase with more than three or four adjectives in it regardless of how they're ordered. Once you're loading up a noun with 5+ adjectives, it'll sound strange no matter what.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 2:31 PM on September 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
Native speakers of English have an implicit knowledge about the preferred order of adjective types in a phrase containing more than one adjective. Thinking of it as a "rule" is misleading. More like a strong tendency, not something that's provable or disprovable like a geometric proof. If you asked five hundred native English speakers which arrangement of adjectives sounded better, you would find that the degree to which they all agreed with one another shows that it can't just be chance or preference... there is an underlying syntax there.
I would guess the main reason we don't hear more about order of adjectives is because prescriptivists actually aren't all that interested in it. It's useless as a shibboleth... native speakers never really mess it up, people don't tend to notice when they do, it varies little between dialects, and it's not a pithy enough rule to easily call someone out for violating. It might mark you as a non-native speaker, but criticizing a non-native speaker for this is basically admitting they're so fluent you're scraping the very bottom of the grammatical barrel trying to find fault with their speech.
The example with seven or eight adjectives sounds odd because it's pretty damn rare for a natural utterance to contain a noun phrase with more than three or four adjectives in it regardless of how they're ordered. Once you're loading up a noun with 5+ adjectives, it'll sound strange no matter what.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 2:31 PM on September 11, 2016 [9 favorites]
Mod note: One comment deleted; as ever, if you don't care, skip the thread.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:48 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:48 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Wow. I spent slmost a year of my life working with this issue programmatically -- in the 1980s, no less -- and now I'm having big scary red flashbacks (which are indeed different than big red scary flashbacks.)
posted by rokusan at 3:22 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by rokusan at 3:22 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
now I'm having big scary red flashbacks (which are indeed different than big red scary flashbacks.)
Do "big scary red flashbacks" have to do with remembering the Cold War and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction?
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:36 PM on September 11, 2016
Do "big scary red flashbacks" have to do with remembering the Cold War and the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction?
posted by Greg_Ace at 3:36 PM on September 11, 2016
This "rule" is a colorless sleeping green furious idea.
posted by Wet Spot at 4:00 PM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Wet Spot at 4:00 PM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
"little old lovely green rectangular silver French whittling knife"
"Lovely green vintage French little silver whittling knife"
What is green silver? Silver that's been enameled?
posted by Ideefixe at 4:28 PM on September 11, 2016
"Lovely green vintage French little silver whittling knife"
What is green silver? Silver that's been enameled?
posted by Ideefixe at 4:28 PM on September 11, 2016
From a creative writing perspective, some of these "wrong" constructions seem much better than the otherwise trite "correct" constructions. A little old lady is a cliché, but an old little lady reads to me as if the author wanted to make it clear that the description should be taken literally.
Also, a big orange man might be a nurseryman for a comercial fruit producer or a presidential candidate, but an orange big man plays center for Syracuse. So it seems like I parse these sorts of constructions backwards, trying to figure out what it is before trying to figure out its attributes. If the adjective changes what I'm searching for, that should go nearest the end of the sentence. All the adjectives that help me decide which of the things I found I should fetch go at the beginning.
posted by Richard Daly at 4:29 PM on September 11, 2016
Also, a big orange man might be a nurseryman for a comercial fruit producer or a presidential candidate, but an orange big man plays center for Syracuse. So it seems like I parse these sorts of constructions backwards, trying to figure out what it is before trying to figure out its attributes. If the adjective changes what I'm searching for, that should go nearest the end of the sentence. All the adjectives that help me decide which of the things I found I should fetch go at the beginning.
posted by Richard Daly at 4:29 PM on September 11, 2016
Are there any English rules that *don't* have exceptions in, if nothing else, casual speech? Even the rule that English sentences must contain words is broken if you say "I don't know" in sort of an up-and-down grunt-hum like Homer Simpson ("ahhUHHNnnn").
posted by lore at 4:45 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by lore at 4:45 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
Oh, geez. If only Mark Twain were here to give this book a lacerating suitable fat what for.
posted by Twang at 5:00 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Twang at 5:00 PM on September 11, 2016 [1 favorite]
I think that it is not a rule as much a guideline. If you move an adjective out of order, you can emphasize that characteristic.
posted by coberh at 5:09 PM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by coberh at 5:09 PM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
A large curvy new shiny white German ceramic soup tureen. I'll remember this the next time I get all wordy and seek to over describe my giant plate of beans.
posted by Oyéah at 5:10 PM on September 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by Oyéah at 5:10 PM on September 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
My Midwestern, old, cranky relatives.
My cranky old Midwestern relatives sounds much more neutral and natural to me.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:04 PM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
My cranky old Midwestern relatives sounds much more neutral and natural to me.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:04 PM on September 11, 2016 [2 favorites]
Metafilter: where the joy gets sucked out of every delightful little thing. "Delightful" before "little", you hacks.
posted by DoubtingThomas at 6:09 PM on September 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by DoubtingThomas at 6:09 PM on September 11, 2016 [3 favorites]
Look, I'm just gonna come out and say it: I aint ever seen a frenchman whittle. sorry if this is racist
You aren't racist, but you are starting to witter.
Examples of the French whittling knife.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:20 PM on September 11, 2016
You aren't racist, but you are starting to witter.
Examples of the French whittling knife.
posted by sebastienbailard at 6:20 PM on September 11, 2016
My valuable hunting knife.
My hunting valuable knife.
Hunting my valuable knife.
posted by ardgedee at 6:21 PM on September 11, 2016
My hunting valuable knife.
Hunting my valuable knife.
posted by ardgedee at 6:21 PM on September 11, 2016
Examples of the French whittling knife.
But none of those are rectangular, green, or silver...?
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:18 PM on September 11, 2016
But none of those are rectangular, green, or silver...?
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:18 PM on September 11, 2016
After years of editing for engineers, my response to that sentence is:
lovely, [delete; opinion not relevant. Or use "high-quality" if necessary]
little [imprecise; exact size/in reference to..?]
old, [negative/irrelevant, unless you need to mention it is an outdated model, if so please specify]
rectangular,
green [color relevant? if not, delete]
French [if origin relevant, better to simply specify name of French manufacturer]
silver [should we specify what kind of silver/silver-plated/etc.?]
whittling knife
posted by emjaybee at 7:06 AM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
lovely, [delete; opinion not relevant. Or use "high-quality" if necessary]
little [imprecise; exact size/in reference to..?]
old, [negative/irrelevant, unless you need to mention it is an outdated model, if so please specify]
rectangular,
green [color relevant? if not, delete]
French [if origin relevant, better to simply specify name of French manufacturer]
silver [should we specify what kind of silver/silver-plated/etc.?]
whittling knife
posted by emjaybee at 7:06 AM on September 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
I don't think its "only" in english that these types of rules exist though.
There are similar rules in other languages. German for instance requires that sentences are ordered providing particular types of information in a particular order and also has restrictions about correct ordering of adjectives.
Time - Manner - Place
Ich gehe am montag mit meine Schwester ins Kino.
posted by mary8nne at 7:09 AM on September 12, 2016
There are similar rules in other languages. German for instance requires that sentences are ordered providing particular types of information in a particular order and also has restrictions about correct ordering of adjectives.
Time - Manner - Place
Ich gehe am montag mit meine Schwester ins Kino.
posted by mary8nne at 7:09 AM on September 12, 2016
While it's true the things I've actually studied don't include language, I am a reasonably literate native speaker. I'm having a hard time coming up with an alternative word order that sounds less strange than the original for the example sentence given. It's a terribly artificial nonsense-phrase that no English speaker would ever use except in this context.
I'll buy that "lovely" belongs at the front and "whittling" belongs at the end. That's a neat observation. Everything else seems completely arbitrary. A green rectangular French knife and a French green rectangular knife are equally weird and impossible to rank. Also, what the hell is a rectangular green silver whittling knife anyway? Do these words actually mean something? I demand to see this object.
As a curmudgeon with little respect for grammar, my advice would be "if you're using more than two adjectives, you're probably doing it wrong. Put the more intrinsic ones near the noun unless you've a good reason to do otherwise."
posted by eotvos at 9:23 AM on September 12, 2016
I'll buy that "lovely" belongs at the front and "whittling" belongs at the end. That's a neat observation. Everything else seems completely arbitrary. A green rectangular French knife and a French green rectangular knife are equally weird and impossible to rank. Also, what the hell is a rectangular green silver whittling knife anyway? Do these words actually mean something? I demand to see this object.
As a curmudgeon with little respect for grammar, my advice would be "if you're using more than two adjectives, you're probably doing it wrong. Put the more intrinsic ones near the noun unless you've a good reason to do otherwise."
posted by eotvos at 9:23 AM on September 12, 2016
Put the more intrinsic ones near the noun
That makes sense, but it would be something you do explicitly. What they're talking about is the fact that native English speakers have an implicit preferred order of adjectives that they are using on-the-fly when talking or even writing, and this ordering is not something you actively make decisions about every time you produce a noun phrase. You do it without thinking.
That massive noun phrase with knife as the head? That's an illustrative example trying to give an overview of what the entire system of English adjective ordering might look like. It's not something you would expect anyone to actually say.
If you analyze utterances purely on the surface level, there will be exceptions, but they're probably not violations of the order of adjectives. There is also idiomatic use (little old lady, big bad wolf, etc.) and reordering based on context (we're already talking about big dogs, so you say "old big dogs" in order contrast the new topic against the current one) and other stuff that gets folded in as you are producing speech. Those other things have to be ruled out when you think you've found a counterexample.
It's interesting because it probably isn't arbitrary at all. If you can tease out the ordering, it provides clues about how we, as human animals, perceive, divide up and rank things in the world.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 11:11 AM on September 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
That makes sense, but it would be something you do explicitly. What they're talking about is the fact that native English speakers have an implicit preferred order of adjectives that they are using on-the-fly when talking or even writing, and this ordering is not something you actively make decisions about every time you produce a noun phrase. You do it without thinking.
That massive noun phrase with knife as the head? That's an illustrative example trying to give an overview of what the entire system of English adjective ordering might look like. It's not something you would expect anyone to actually say.
If you analyze utterances purely on the surface level, there will be exceptions, but they're probably not violations of the order of adjectives. There is also idiomatic use (little old lady, big bad wolf, etc.) and reordering based on context (we're already talking about big dogs, so you say "old big dogs" in order contrast the new topic against the current one) and other stuff that gets folded in as you are producing speech. Those other things have to be ruled out when you think you've found a counterexample.
It's interesting because it probably isn't arbitrary at all. If you can tease out the ordering, it provides clues about how we, as human animals, perceive, divide up and rank things in the world.
posted by lefty lucky cat at 11:11 AM on September 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Needs moar hat
posted by Joseph Gurl at 12:59 AM on September 13, 2016
posted by Joseph Gurl at 12:59 AM on September 13, 2016
« Older Grief and empathy | Live Broadcast of Midsummer Night's Dream from... Newer »
This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments
Interesting that this is supposed to be revelatory. I mean, it's not something native speakers ever think about, but presumably people who've ever taken a language class have encountered rules for adjective order. (Or is it a Germanic language thing? German is time-manner-place. I don't remember Latin having a rule. When I took French, grammar was all but completely ignored because it was "like English". Or something.*)
*I was hoping I could find numbers on what percentage of Berkeley undergraduates speak a language other than English at home (and which languages), but I couldn't. Anyway, the assumption that we'd never seen a language other than English or French was laughable.
posted by hoyland at 9:17 AM on September 11, 2016