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remarkablemayonaise t1_j6m0hll wrote

Reply to comment by sstrombe in ELI5: Why does the order of adjectives matter? by AbleReporter565

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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