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sstrombe t1_j6l5s73 wrote

In case anyone wants to learn more about the “correct” adjective order (which most native English speakers use reflexively), this Grammarly write up explains it pretty clearly

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remarkablemayonaise t1_j6m0hll wrote

It's a good start, but misses the "big, bad wolf" effect that breaks the rule. ("i" before "a" or "o" for like sounding words) and the "Polyanna Principle" of putting positive or neutral words before negative words. There are a few more as well. Language rules are made to be broken and refined after all.

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tyler1128 t1_j6p842h wrote

That's actually quite interesting. I don't feel like I ever really learned about adjective order, or at least I don't remember it, but it's just intuition. "the brick brown big wall" to me seems to infer that brick brown is a color of the wall, and "the brick, brown big wall" seems like a weird way of saying the wall is of bricks and the bricks are brown, but I couldn't even give a inkling on why I feel that way.

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remarkablemayonaise t1_j6pcypo wrote

Teaching English as a foreign language relies on more than being able to speak English for this reason. Knowing the difference between "I've been painting the house" and "I've painted the house" is okay, but why isn't it, "I've been knowing my friend for five years"? English is a quirky language and it's quirks are fairly different from most other European languages.

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tyler1128 t1_j6pgba5 wrote

I've heard English described as a weird, messy amalgam of a germanic language with strong romance language influence being thrown in later, especially French. The closest sibling, Frisian, was described as English if it evolved without the large romance language influence on English.

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malenkylizards t1_j6lvctw wrote

I feel like this needs vetting. From what I can tell this assertion has been attributed to like one source and from there passed around like it's fact. My gut tells me this is one of those things like "i before e," with tons of exceptions, ambiguities, and variation, but I admit i don't have the research.

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captainAwesomePants t1_j6lw2s1 wrote

I suppose the easiest way to demonstrate that would be to come up with a counterexample, but I can't think of one.

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malenkylizards t1_j6lwf78 wrote

One I saw earlier was "ugly, yella, no-good keister," which sandwiches color between two opinions.

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Skiptree t1_j6lwmm4 wrote

Doesn’t quite work however because “yella” in this case is really saying coward, right?

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malenkylizards t1_j6ly4pl wrote

Well, a lot of these things are really opinions, or colored by your feelings about them. If I call my dog a sweet little old girl, does it sound wronger if it's an 80 pound puppy GSD with an "old soul"?

But suppose you're right and we disallow anything outside of the opinion category, unless it can be shown to be objectively true. What if my keister was purple, because of the color of my pants? No opinion there. Ugly purple no-good keister sounds about as right or slightly better than ugly no-good purple keister.

I agree that the rule seems plausible because lots of parts of it work, and lots of examples of things sounding right or wrong come to mind, but it seeming plausible doesn't mean it's true, if that makes sense. I would want to see statistics. I want to see someone say "we ran this corpus of 30,000 books through a computer, used this natural language processor to categorize every string of consecutive adjectives, and found that such and such percent of them fit the rule perfectly. The violations were mostly of so and so"

Tbh I'm probably not going to do it or look into it too much, I ain't got time, and I'm sure there's a grad student this would be perfect for. But without a more rigorous analysis, I'd hesitate to pass on the rule as if it were true.

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nIBLIB t1_j6m0zw8 wrote

Yella isn’t a colour. It’s short for ‘yellow-bellied’ which means cowardly

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Etherbeard t1_j6mbif3 wrote

Assertions attributed to one source are how English wound up with so many fake rules like those outlawing split infinitives, starting sentences with conjunctions, and ending them with prepositions.

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Vampiric2010 t1_j6m07qe wrote

Isn't language full of assertions passed around as fact? Like how people incorrectly use the hard g for gif?

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Etherbeard t1_j6mbxqd wrote

This is absolutely true. For example, there are no rules in English barring the use of split infinitives, ending sentences in prepositions, or beginning them with conjunctions. These were all created by individuals who didn't like them stylistically. These rules percolated around and eventually got picked up by grammar-nazi school marms who drilled it into their students as though it were fact.

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flyingbarnswallow t1_j6m2abu wrote

Yes and no. Much of what is taught in schools and passed around between laypeople as the so-called rules is simply incorrect. However, linguistics is a field with many scholars, who, as the scientists they are, observe, experiment on, and model language. There are lots of theoretical debates, especially because linguistics as it stands now is a fairly young field, but that doesn’t mean misinformation is all there is.

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the1ine t1_j6ofqij wrote

Yes, because language has evolved (often in parallel) and is memetic. The whole thing is one big game of telephone. I believe this is why Stephen Wolfram is pushing to create a new form of language similar to maths that can be used to universally communicate anything. Because everything else is subject to history and context.

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Dragongaze13 t1_j6mb6ps wrote

As a French speaker the order just "made sense" to me, as it does in French.

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pro185 t1_j6mp6m0 wrote

Perhaps the most interesting part is this is a relatively high level priority ordering system that is (mostly) innately understood when learning the language as a child. Just by hearing others speak/seeing them write we program our brains to only accept one ordering of words as correct even though we were never formally taught this system.

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corsicanguppy t1_j6m26lm wrote

Grammarly pluralizes 'e-mail' with an S. I can't trust it as an authority for anything after learning it got that wrong.

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amazingmikeyc t1_j6mdg6v wrote

Sometimes e-mail is used like you'd use "mail" or "post" - "I wrote a lot of mail today"

But sometimes it's used like you'd use "letter" - "I wrote a lot of letters today"

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Minuted t1_j6m4qxp wrote

Why would e-mails be wrong?

Unless you're talking about a single e-mail. I guess the plural of mail isn't mails but e-mail would be a different word. For example we say "I got an e-mail" rather than "I got a piece of e-mail", like we would for physical mail.

Weird discrepancy I suppose, but considering every other way we use the word e-mail, "e-mails" makes the most sense.

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alexllew t1_j6m9hff wrote

I think it depends. I received a ton of e-mail sounds find to me, but I'm going to write 3 e-mail is definitely wrong. Something about whether you're using it as a discrete or bulk noun I guess.

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sirreldar t1_j6maz26 wrote

I think the technical term is countable vs uncountable.

Same way we say "I drank so much (uncountable) water" but "I drank so many (countable) cups/bottles of water".

Or "I lift less (uncountable) weight. I lift fewer (countable) weights"

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the1ine t1_j6ogvj1 wrote

I think there's just a word gap. When sending old school paper mail you can say all of the following;

there's a lot of mail today

has the mail arrived

mail me the details

--BUT you would typically not say

i sent two mails

--INSTEAD you'd likely say

i sent two letters

When we replace mail with e-mail we have also replaced letter with e-mail. So when I say:

i sent two e-mails

Anyone trying to reverse engineer the obvious rule would see that as synonymous with;

i sent two mails

Thus because there's not a 1-to-1 relationship between the 'old' and the 'new' many who are applying the old grammar will not accept the new method, which when you fill in the gaps (ie with e-mail=letter) is perfectly fine

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