“It Will Irritate You Very Slightly For The Rest Of Your Life”: 30 Cool Language Facts

And penne means 'quills' or the type of pasta, whereas pene is a certain male appendage

Please tell us the literal meaning of the incorrect translation :-)

can you elaborate?

Love Chinese culture, food, arts, films, Kung Fu, the geography (as seen on movies and documentaries), and though I love the sound of the languages, the whole intonation thing changing the meaning of a word freaks me out!

I speak mandarin and it's really not that bad. I feel like people often exaggerate how sensitive the tones are

I remember a fellow kindergarten teacher telling me that and saying she is much more comfortable using Korean words with our Korean students than Mandarin with Chinese students because of this. Weird thing for me was this wasn't mentioned when I did my mandatory two semesters of Mandarin in high school.

Me too, last time I checked

Thought you were going to say Pope

There are, in fact, rules. This article may help: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/13/sentence-order-adjectives-rule-elements-of-eloquence-dictionary (in short: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose).

Grammatical rules are enforced to remove ambiguity from regional, colloquial speech. This rule is so universal, and so non-essential, it doesn't need to be taught: "The rule is that multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. Unlike many laws of grammar or syntax, this one is virtually inviolable, even in informal speech. You simply can't say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots." I would argue "Big, Fat" is a bad example, because the two adjectives combined have a colloquial meaning that has little to do with the meaning of each adjective independently.

The instinctual way we speak a language IS the rules. The 'rules' are just an observation of normal practice.

It's not a spoken rule, but it has been shown to be very strictly followed by native English speakers. It has been studied, and non-native english speakers have to be taught that adjective order is: quantity or number, quality or opinion, size, age, shape, color, proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin, or material), purpose or qualifier

In America, one speaks as one speaks. It's a combination of how your folks spoke, the neighborhood you grew up in, the school you attended. I grew up in Brooklyn and attended a Catholic grammar school and a public vo-tech school. Then I joined the army and my US postings were all in southern states. (Most of the others, with exception of Germany didn't matter, not many people spoke English. Been in Florida now for a bit over 30 years. I have mistaken for a native. I have speed, patter, slang down pretty good. But when I get hot under the collar, the Brooklyn comes screamin' to the surface in all it's 90 MPH speech speed and the somewhat "colorful" language. Speech is what you make it from how you learned the language over time. Too many places in the US have their own distinct way of speaking for there to be hard and fast "rules".

There are I once saw a chart about this, there is a rule for adjective order but I can't find it now.

Nikki Bastian

Nikki Bastian

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I think there are, actually. I think you're supposed to list the attributes in a certain order, like size,.then color, ect. Don't quote me, or ask where I learned it, it came from the Junk Drawer of my Mind.

not instinctive per se b/c each language/dialect has its own rules...e.g., in english we say "big red ball," but in french they say "gros boule rouge"...

Yes, there are rules! We just don’t learn them in school, we learn them by growing up and speaking the language. It’s kind of crazy, actually.

I think it tends to come from importance of the category the adjective belongs to. As stated size, age etc. Probably because it sets up an image in your mind in a logical step by step way. The irony of that though is the noun is at the end. Huge, ancient, ugly, black, hellspawned, chitonous, bloodsucking... gnat.

If I'm wrong I learned about it this year in English and it's called Strings of adjectives.

adjective class heirarchy, sorta like the noun class heirarchy in swahili

Yes, adjectives follow the Royal Order; roughly: quantity, opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. More details here: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/adjective-order/

In EFL books you can find rules, but I think they are useless.

Of course, there are rules. There are always rules. Humans feel naked and vulnerable without rules.

No, there aren't really any rules at all in the sense that there's a governing body that decides how a language should be spoken. That's usually the case in prescriptivist languages such as French, but English is descriptivist, which means that dictionaries and other reference sources don't tell us how to use the language, they just tell us how it's *being* used.

https://www.gingersoftware.com/content/grammar-rules/adjectives/order-of-adjectives/

Language isn't instinctive. It's learned. The big, fluffy, red dog is just the way we were "taught" by observation and use. (My theory, anyway)

That's called tmesis which is a lovely word in itself. Tmesis is the splitting of parts of a word with another intervening - abso-f*cking-lutely

Yes! Unbe-f*****g-lievable doesn't... oh c**p. It kinda has a nice ring to it, actually.

Lol that's so sweet to read.

me same when knowing the feeling of you

Clifford is a big red fluffy dog!

you only need the commas between adjectives you can switch the order, as they modify the noun is similar ways, (or use an "and" between)--so you don't need the comma after fluffy. (Clifford is a big and fluffy red dog)

Agreed 👍

I would say the exact same thing. It just sounds way better.

That's exactly how it should be. Size, shape, colour. At least I think fluffy counts as shape here since it's not material or opinion.

That explains everything!

How else can the French win at something?

Gâteau (cake) -> from old French Gasteau, same sort of roots as the word Gastronomy :) I learned that one in French cooking class!