Did you know that adjectives go in a particular order?

I asked a similar question not too long ago, being surprised to realize that there was such an ordering of adjectives. I was specifically interested in knowing whether there were other languages that had similar rules. Those who answered and who spoke languages other than English said that there were no such rules in the other languages they spoke.

Not surprised at all. This is what I was brainwashed taught when I learned English. What I find surprising is that native speakers don’t know it exists.

Interesting. This may explain why it’s sometimes obvious that I’m an EAL speaker.

Wow. I never heard this before, but as a native English speaker it is obvious now that you mention it.

It must make learning English a bit more difficult.

Yes, that rule is for adjectives placed before nouns, known as the modifier or attributive position. The order is precise, although native English speakers really aren’t aware of it. Adjectives line-up very neatly.

Adjectives often follow nouns; again, we don’t give them much thought (anything interesting; someplace nice; nobody present). It’s fun when an adjective and noun get reversed entirely for effect and attention (mission impossible; river wild).

Tell that to my hairy brown dog. After he’s done chewing on his grey wiggly week-old giant leg bone.

A good old interesting likable guideline, though.

I think the difference in what you were taught and what we were taught, @Mimishu1995, is that this is such a fundamental part of our language (as fundamental, for example, as “what letters sound like”), that it’s just not taught to us formally. When we grow up with it then we know what sounds right and what doesn’t, without even putting it into a formal “rule” like that.

I’ve been speaking English for more than 60 years, and writing it for not many years less than that, and I only last month saw this listed as “a rule of English” for the first time – ever. It makes perfect sense to me, and I like the instruction to “try to violate it if you want to sound like a psycho” – or an ESL student, I suppose – because it’s sort of true. On the other hand, I’m sure that there are many perfectly valid violations of that “rule”, too, by perfectly good speakers and writers of English. But you sort of have to know the rule to be able to violate it in a knowledgeable way, too.

It’s the kind of important, universal, old, syntactical rule that you really can’t violate with impunity. Not the kind of old, syntactical, universal, important rule that you would violate just any old time.

@Mimishu1995 I never thought about it. I don’t know that I was ever taught it formally,either. We just grew up talking that way.

A wet, small, HUGE, supporter of Trump?
I was never very good at diagramming sentences!

“Opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose, Noun.”

Gee, I hope there aren’t any big, bad counterexamples (size, opinion). If there are, would someone please deliver them wrapped in a celebratory little box (purpose, size) with a pink double-twist bow (color, shape)?

I was thinking about this and good poetry often breaks this rule but so does bad poetry!

I am loving all your excellent imaginative illustrative examples (opinion, origin, purpose)

”“Opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose, Noun.”
In Kansas a pink size three is too tiny in my opinion.

@Dutchess_III There aren’t actually any counterexamples in that sentence because you have placed the two adjectives (“pink” and “tiny”) in different clauses. Also, you used “size three” as a noun phrase, so it can’t be expected to follow the adjectival order anymore.

Eeek. I hate English!

It’s a right old bitch, isn’t it?

It is. I can write. Aced literature, creative writing and journalism, but my college English prof advised me to drop with a pass/fail since I was about half a second from an F! I just don’t “get it.” Or maybe I’m just stubborn. IDK.