Sunday, October 4, 2009

Adjective word order

Hey everyone, I have been meaning to write about this for awhile now but it is a bit of a long grammar lesson so I have not felt motivated enough to do it. But today is the day I will talk about the correct adjective word order. In Japanese, you can put adjectives in any order but in English there is a standard order you must follow. Grammatically, it doesn't matter but in terms of usage if you don't follow this order then it sounds VERY WEIRD~!

  1. Opinion: lovely, beautiful, smart, perfect
  2. Size: big, small, little, tall, long, short
  3. Other: angry, cold, dry, firm, disgusting
  4. Age: new, old, young, 40-year-old
  5. Color: blue, black, yellow, green
  6. Origin: American, Japanese, Dutch
  7. Material: silk, cotton, wood, metal, plastic
  8. Type/Purpose: running shoes, hiking boots

So for example:

She's wearing a beautiful red Vietnamese dress.

I like to drink delicious Jamaican coffee.

It is an ugly big old grey American concrete research library.

It is kind of strange to use adjectives from each group, usually we just use a maximum of 3 or 4 adjectives:

It was a terrific fast-paced 1980s action movie.

I just bought a new green summer dress.

My friend moved into a wonderful big old apartment.

But most people rarely use more than 2 adjectives at once:

My office is in the tall yellow building.

Wow, those are sexy black pants~! Are they new?

REMEMBER adjective order in English is importantBold so:

My office is in the yellow tall building. X

Wow, those are black sexy pants~! Are they new? X

THIS SOUNDS WRONG!!! It sounds funny and strange, unnatural.

Be Careful everyone and enjoy speaking English,

Phil

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