Adjectival Order: Why A "Big Red Balloon", not a "Red Big Balloon"?
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- čas přidán 10. 12. 2013
- tomscott.com - @tomscott - The order of adjectives is one of those wonderful linguistic things that no-one really notices until it's pointed out to them.
Filmed at CZcams Space, London, and directed by Matt Gray (mattg.co.uk - @unnamedculprit)
As a native English speaker, I never realized this. Golly, how inconvenient for foreigners.
+DoowiDoowi
I think it is plain wrong, you can say either way. and whats interesting same order usually is valid for other languages.
As a foreigner, I also never realized this.
It depends. In my native language there is similar approach, I never noticed it in neither of them
I could never learn it. It took me 2 years to get used to it
All languages have damn-its. Seriously, though, if you like these kind of videos you should read John McWhorter's linguistics books, specifically the Power of Babel or Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue. Or get his lectures on Audible. And yes I'm shilling for a linguistics professor, so sue me. You can always get it for free at the library like I did if you don't want to buy it (I read Power of Babel from the library and got his linguistics lectures from Audible for 1 credit, so I sort of split the difference)
My favorite adjective fun is "Deep blue sea." Is the color of the sea deep blue, or is the sea both blue and deep?
If you wanted to convey both concepts, would you say 'deep deep blue sea' or simply 'deep blue sea'?
or use a comma. Deep, blue sea
Flaming Obsidian We can get some insight from a phrase often associated with this. "The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea". It comes from sailors (the best phrases often do), who sometimes had to work on a suspended seat on the side of the ship to clean it. Between the anchor point of the seat suspended at the mast, known as the Devil, and the ocean below them, which would mean death should they fall. Thus, to be caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea was a precarious situation. "Deep" likely describes the danger, and therefore the depth, rather than the hue.
I think the word 'fun' is used VERY loosely here.
deep blue, deep sea
I was thinking about this recently. The best explanation I can think of is intrinsicality. The more intrinsic and permanent the adjective is to the noun, the further down the list it goes. "A poor Indian farmer" is the default word order because he will always be Indian, but not necessarily poor. If you said "An Indian poor farmer", that would imply that he belongs to a specific class of farmer that will always be poor, that transcends nationality.
That would also explain why the opinion of the speaker goes first, because it's in no way intrinsic to the thing being described. "A horrible rainy day" and "A good rainy day" implies that the speaker is conveying their opinion of the weather, not the day itself. But if they said "A rainy good day" or "A rainy horrible day", that would imply that there's something about the day that makes it good or bad apart from the weather. It just sounds strange in those sentences because they're mentioning the rain at all.
As for why size goes before colour of inanimate objects, I have no idea!
Maybe it's to do with the colour being more intrinsic than size to the object being referred to? If you have many apples, some green and some red, you'd more likely separate them by colour and only then talk about relative size.
In other words, perhaps we unconsciously understand that colour is a better indicator of a thing's "species" than size?
Pining for the fjords This sounds feasible. I am surprised Tom Scott hasn't commented on this.
Your explanation is beyond darn good! Hats off - this is a subtle life changer
In some views, size could be an indeterminate attribute.
Such as a view of a balloon against against the sky. How would anyone know it is relatively big?
While color is never an indeterminate attribute.
@@dennisquinn8558 The Chameleon likes to have a word.
I love how this ordering is just instinctual when you talk, but if you tried to construct a sentence that followed these rules it would probably take you a bit.
But whenever we talk or write, in any form, we are constructing sentences on the fly so no it wouldn't. It does, however, take conscious effot to subvert it.
You literally repeated exactly what the op said...
As a foreigner who learned english I agree, thinking about the rules is a nightmare and most of the time it doesn't even work. It took me years to realize that learning the rule at all was a waste of time and I wish my teachers hadn't taught it to me.
What you have to do is listen, read and talk the language a lot until it becomes natural and that an incorrect adjectival order just "sounds weird".
@@marzipug5439 what does op mean
Welcome to the world of non native speakers
Something I love to play with is the phrase “coal-fired-oven-baked pizza” because it’s not just 4 adjectives, but it builds sequentially. “Coal” describes the fire, “coal fired” describes the oven, “coal fired oven” describes the baking, and “coal fired oven baked” describes the pizza.
i love a baked oven fired coal pizza
Both. The deeper the sea, the deeper the blue.
How's oven-baked pizza going to pay his alimony now?
@@StupidIsMyJob What?
@@dannypipewrench533 'Wood fired pizza' joke
About 10-15 years ago, I saw a homemade sign on a telephone pole posted by a person advertising for work. The writer described herself as something like a "Russian mature woman", which was strikingly jarring, and quite obviously written by a non-native-speaker. And that's when I was first consciously aware that there is some unwritten rules to ordering adjectives in English. And I started to work out in my head what those rules were. It's so weird and arbitrary that there are those rules at all.
Something interesting: in Spanish "mi vieja amiga" means "my long time friend" but "mi amiga vieja" means "my friend who's old".
In Italian: "Il mio vecchio amico" means "My long time friend" while "Il mio amico vecchio" means "My friend who's old", where vecchio is "old" and amico is "friend".
There are a few like this in French: ancien, propre, etc.
@@altermetax "Il mio amico vecchio" suona molto innaturale peró.
@@giuseppepatane6601 Non suona innaturale se intendi dire che è vecchio di età
In Greek on the other hand, it doesn't matter where you'll put the adjective. You can place it before or after the noun, and you can also have one adjective before a noun and another after it.
Example:
το μεγάλο σκυλί (to meghálo skylí)
and
το σκυλί το μεγάλο (to skylí to meghálo)
both mean "the big dog" with no change in meaning (note that "to" in both cases means "the", "meghálo" means "big" and "skylí" means dog).
Generally, the nice thing that Greek has is that you don't have to care that much about word order and you can generally go beserk with the syntax (it also doesn't make much sense to say that Greek has a specific word order)
So the rule is:
This is my button.
My _wooden_ button.
My _Chinese_ wooden button.
My _green_ Chinese wooden button.
My _old_ green Chinese wooden button.
My _round_ old, green Chinese wooden button.
My _big_ round, old, green Chinese wooden button.
My _shiny_ big, round, old, green Chinese wooden button.
My _favourite_ shiny, big, round, old, green Chinese wooden button.
Why has Freddie Mecury singing "I'm going slightly Mad" suddenly popped into my head?
for some reason my brain is telling me big and shiny should trade places >_
+WorldNews92 old and round should definitely switch place. I can *feel* it.
+Hollow Ichigo i'd get shiny describing green, rather than the button. - my old shiny green chinese wooden button.
or is it a second colour adjective? how do these work? i can't say green shiny Chinese button because you would think why I just called the chinese shiny
this should be the top comment
What I love is suddenly you use commas
Time immemorial is a legacy of French. If you want to make something sound fancy, put your adjectives at the end, like body politic.
You're talking about literary usage now.
Au contraire
@@PatrickMcAsey ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Literary usage becomes common parlance.
Cryptofire
Je suis fatigue.
All the Kings Henry and their Attorneys General heartily agree.
My theory is that it's a kind of collocation. Just like we almost always say "black and white", and not "white and black". We got used to using and hearing a certain adjectival order, which became a norm, which became a rule.
+Simon Maclean wow you're right. white and black ughgh
other examples: cake & ice cream vs ice cream & cake
fire & brimstone vs brimstone & fire
... actually I can't think of any others right now...
Except that those are arrangements of nouns, not adjectives -- so, a different subject altogether...
No, all that Simon is saying is that habits can stick. That a habit exists regarding a different part of speech doesn't change that.
Stuart Morrow - But the point of the video is that there are certain rough rules to the way we order adjectives -- there are no rules of any sort for the pairing of nouns -- that's the difference, and that's why it's irrelevant to the original subject...
I think this would be a really interesting thing to subvert when writing. Like if you were writing a horror novel and gave a few adjectives before certain things, moving around the order slightly could create a sense of unease or that something wasnt right
There is a lyric in a Magnetic Zeros song that goes: "...old big Sun". I wondered why it sounded so striking, now I know.
Old Uncle Silas it's probably because big, old sounds like big ol' which is hillbilly to say the least.
You're right. "Old, big" sounds so dignified or awe-inspiring.
As opposed to the new big sun which gravity just got going in a nebula. There'd be new small and medium-sized suns too!
Not specifically adjectival order, but I always get a chuckle when I put "the fuck" in the wrong place in a sentence. Like, "Get the fuck over here" being changed to "Get over the fuck here"
Obligatory XKCD: xkcd.com/37/
I'd never really thought about it, but it's interesting how the word order just "feels" right or wrong.
Also, I salute your excellent PotC reference.
... Where?
@@AnimeSunglasses I haven't watched _Pirates_ _of_ _the_ _Caribbean,_ but I have heard of this phrase anyway. Check at 1:02 in the video (and maybe check the source of this information).
@@Hand-in-Shot_Productions ...D'OH!
I've noticed a recent phenomenon of nouns coming before the adjective in English, such as when talking about matters educational.
coweatsman I haven't noticed this. It must be a thing recent.
+coweatsman In portuguese we normally say the subjective then the adjective, but inverting this order is accepted as a poetic way of saying something.
+Captain Davy That's what +coweatsman is referring to. In English, putting the adjective second is poetic in nature.
+coweatsman There are two options 1) it's a matter of an expansion of English word order imitating French to seem more sophisticated (as illustrated by 'time immemorial') 2) people have been listening to too many Gilbert and Sullivan patter songs.
A lot of those, especially in legal terminology, were adopted from French and kept their word order.
Hey, Tom, how about explaining why it's Lake X (Lake Superior, Lake Victoria) all the time, Mount if before and Mountain if it's after, River both before and After, but Pond, Sea, Creek, Brook, Stream, Bay, Sound, and Ocean. Also Forest (after), Wood (after), Glacier (after), Desert (after... except in about 40% of cases where it's omitted completely because the name of the Desert means Desert... Sahara, Negev, Gobi)... So why do Lakes, Mounts, and Rivers (sometimes) get special treatment?
Hello from three years in the future. I can only answer one of your many questions (since Tom doesn't seem interested): The placement of River is largely a US-UK difference. The UK likes to have the word come before: the River Thames, the River Wye. The US prefers it after: the Mississippi River, the Potomac River. Because we read so much of each other's literature, we get used to saying English rivers the English way (who would ever say "Thames River"?) and vice-versa. But third-country rivers can go both ways: Nile River or River Nile.
To be fair, for lakes, it seems can be put behind as well (Michigan Lake) and it would technically be correct. But in general, maybe it's because we use the lake, mount or river as titles rather than objects... like how we use Mr or Mrs...
@@TheDeathmail It can, yes. In general, with a lake or mountain, if it is a locally significant location in size, it's often Lake/Mount X, Especially if it doesn't share the name with another geographical feature of the same type. If it's not particularly significant, it tends to be Y Lake/Mountain. A notable exception in English would be if something is translated from another language and the name means 'Lake/Mountain of the Z', you'd get Z Lake/Mountain. These can fluctuate! If you're a local near Bon Echo Provincial Park in Ontario, 'Lake Mazinaw' isn't uncommon (or wasn't when I was last there), but bigger maps refer to it as 'Mazinaw Lake'. But the other lakes in the park are all 'X Lake': Bon Echo Lake, Joe Perry Lake.. You can get a large mountain in an area, or a medium one essentially alone, and it will be Mount Y (Mount St. helens, Mount Rainier, Mount Shasta) but a less significant mountain would get Y Mountain.
Cool observation. I can think of only a couple of exceptions: Crater Lake in Oregon, and Spirit Mountain in Minnesota.
@@tashkiira7838 I'm not sure the translation thing holds up.
Think about Lake Maggiore (Lago Maggiore), Lake Garda (Lago di Garda) or Lake Constance (Bodensee).
that paper sound effect is really nice
*"A good, delicious, large, round, old, blue, wooden, British box"*
1:50 Poetry has, in myriad ways, powers vast to re-order a phrase.
Actually the red big balloon is possible. Consider a situation, where you have two categories of balloons. Big ones and small ones. This is the main ordering feature. If you then want to refer to one specific big balloon, you'd call it the 'red big balloon'.
(Of course this is approaching the rocking chair example.)
Blue British wooden box? Does it do time travel?
Edit: I'm an idiot. I paused the video, commented, hit play again, all in the two seconds between that sentence and the TARDIS flying by.
Judith L YOU'RE AWESOME. WAS SCROLLING THROUGH COMMENTS FOR A WHOVIAN REFERENCE ;')
@@meghanabhange13 WHY ARE YOU YELLING?
@@Djorgal THAT'S HOW MEATBAGS TALK, BENDER.
There's no edit.
@@flourishojemen8939 The reply's from before they added that.
I just discovered this channel and, as a language lover, I LOVE IT. Thank you!
Agilmar
How long did it take you to watch all the videos? :p
Fun fact: in italian the word order sometimes changes the meaning of the adjective
For instance, an old TV advertisement went like this: "You don't need a brush big, but a big brush!" because moving the adjective before the noun actually changes the meaning from "big" (i.e. huge) to "great" (i.e. really good)
1:02 "Now this is more of a guideline than a rule", last time I listen this sentence was in the first Pirate of Carribeans lmfao
in the citations as he said that he put "Rush", as in Geoffrey Rush, actor of Barbossa
You've predicted the tier system in the UK during corona virus 4 years before it happened there mate.
Haha, love the Doctor Who reference there. And I know why phrases like "time immemorial" exist. It sounds authoritative, and poetically archaic, and it does for at least one good reason: it's following the adjective order for Latin, and no archaic language, even Greek, has had such an authoritative influence on our language - mainly because Latin was the basis for liturgical and biblical texts for so long. Tyndale wrote the first English language Bible, but he (and his helpers) were so attached to the old Latin word orders that preserved it they did, even if awkward it sounded. It took a few more Bibles till we got to the King James Bible, and by then, scholars had gone back to the Greek and Hebrew texts for a more authoritative translation, and the affectations of the old Latin Bible's texts were dropped. [But a lot of archaic English elements were kept in the King James version on purpose. No one said "thee", "thou", "ye", or "dost" by the early 17th Century, but they left such words in there to give the text a sense of ancient authority].
Back to the latinate word order: This is also why adjectives in French tend to follow the noun - because French is a Romance language, and English [though heavily influenced by such tongues] is still a Germanic language that doesn't always like to play by Latin rules. Case in point: It's oft repeated that you MUST NOT, CANNOT end a sentence with a preposition. But English breaks this rule all the time, because a preposition is often easier to end a sentence with, and the old rule [based on the thinking of linguistic pedants who were fond of latinate word order] is just not something that up with most people will put. :p
datalal624
Latin doesn't have an adjective order as such. From what I have read, the grammarians have found that adjectives precede their nouns in actual use slightly more than they follow them. But either order is acceptable. (Indeed, as long as no ambiguity is introduced, the adjective can be in a different spot in the sentence.)
A construction like "time immemorial" sounds like it derives from Latin because Latin is the language of most influence in which it would see common use (maybe about 47% of the time.) It also has the interesting feature that an "unusual" word order draws attention to the specific idea.
By the way, it would be "is just not something up with _which_ most people will put." The "reason" why you "can't" end a sentence with a preposition is because the preposition is perceived to need an object. You don't have to agree with the reasoning of the pedantics. But you actually went into a misrepresentation.
OK, sorry John. This is why I should, you know, actually learn latin...
+John Undefined Hmm, maybe it's from French instead, since its influence was brought by Norman lords, giving a sense of authority to it?
Or maybe it was Latin, and English scholars only noticed the foreign-looking adjective order and copied it for its academic association.
I would be interested to see a survey of the variation across languages in the flexibility of word order in constructions like this. I suspect that weakly inflected languages like English see less variation than strongly inflected (or agglutinating) languages. Russian, for example, has a fairly free word order because the association between adjectives and their nouns (or subjects and verbs) are more strongly indicated by morphology, leaving less room for confusion when word order is adjusted at the whim of the speaker for emphasis, or for whatever other reason.
I love these old linguistics videos. I'd enjoy seeing more of these, if you ever manage to get bored of the objectively more exciting videos you're making these days!
Finnish is extremely inflected, and agglutinative, and I had never thought about this thing. However, when I did some googling, it seems like Finnish follows largely the same order as English. However, there are apparently some additional minor rules, like if one adjective is really long and another very short, it could cause the short one to be thrown before the long one.
Like you said, word order, per se, is quite free in the kind of languages my native language belongs to, but the order of listing adjectives isn't based on any grammatical rules, according to Tom Scott here. It's just some kind of convention and whatever harmony the ear agrees with.
Just came across this language series, much fun and my cup of tea.
And I must say, this was an amazing (yet possibly groan-worthy) set-up for a blue British box. I lost count how many times I replayed that bit, so duly and truly sublime it is!
It's amazing how well we've evolved to pick up such complex skills for communication.
Now im gonna have to wait until i've forgotten about this video, in order to properly order all my adjectives again..
You can say Red Big Balloon, to differentiate between several big balloons.
You can say Big Red Balloon, to differentiate between several red balloons.
Context is important.
Exactly what came to mind during this video. Great series
I suspect that sometimes the ordering of adjectives is based primarily on the cadence of the construction. *A big, bad, bony Brazilian banana.* How does that one fit with the hierarchal linguistic rules? I know it just sound better that way, based on the musicality of it.
***** If your bananas are bony, you might want to make sure it's actually a banana...
+ROBwithaB That's a good point... "big, bad wolf" is another example that goes against the opinion -> size adjective order suggested in this video.
"Big Bad Bony" and "Big Bad Wolf" conform to the rule of ablaut reduplication where the vowels are in the order i, a, o. For example: bish, bash, bosh, flipflop or chit-chat.
I know, "bad, big, Brazilian, bony banana" sounds wrong!!!
“Big bad” is a common combination of adjectives (probably from the big bad wolf) so I guess people just accepted it
"Boots purple" is safer than "purple boots," because if you get cut off, then the person you're talking to at least got the main idea.
Well that's the way it is in French (at least sometimes).
Unfortunately, that's one of the things that make language such a frustrating study.
As much as it is true that "boots purple" would be a more direct way of saying "purple boots", this measure of importance applies to all parts of language, even the verb. The initial word(s) (incipit if you will) carries with it the responsibility of the whole sentence. When you stress a word ("it was _them_ who fled"), its importance strengthens, thus it would be logical to employ it earlier in speech. However, the amount of following information could impact the flow of apprehension and make the sentence harder to digest. (Rhetoricians often recourse to pauses in their speech to allow for reflection.)
Ultimately, the greater picture of the intricate dynamics between words that we have today facilitates understanding and invites interpretation. After all, language is an art.
The only proper way to fully explain a new concept, is to assign it a new word.
how bout tell that person not to interrupt you.
Dalton Brown you make that seems easy...
A bit late but, "This is a dangerous chemical" is safer than "This is a chemical dangerous"
"There is a rough rule in English that says adjectives should be ordered in the following fashion
1. General opinion.
2. Specific Opinion.
3. Size.
4. Shape.
5. Age.
6. Colour.
7. Origin.
8. Construction."
In portuguese the order is like: "a ballon big and red"
But "ballon red big" is the more used and "big ballon red" also can be used.
And "ballon big red" without the conjunction "and(e)"
Yeah, you can use all these. But in brazilian portuguese is more used in the order that i mentioned.
+Magmagan Yes, you can think that way too, but it depends from wich occasion or phrase we're talking about.
+Yuri In French the order can be "un gros ballon rouge" as he said, but you can say "un gros et rouge ballon" and "un ballon rouge et gros." You can't say "un ballon gros rouge" or "un gros rouge ballon" because there is a rule in French which forbid to put consecutively two adjectives without the word "et" -> "and "in English.
I need to go to bed but I cannot stop watching these videos! Love these! :)
An intelligent linguistics vlog! Rarer than hen's teeth (or is it hens' teeth?).
If there's one thing students need to understand but teachers never explain, it's that almost all errors are usage mistakes, not grammar mistakes. And usage is a matter of habit, not rules.
It's hens' teeth (plural)- or 'a hen's teeth' (singular).
@Kim Yo Jong's Sandwich Hon Toth.
(Unless that's someone from Star Wars)
I just used this as a reference when writing an email to make sure i didn't sound like an idiot, Then after sending i realised i'd made a stupid spelling mistake, i am truly beyond hope
It was digital- say it was a typo.
So we say 'big bad wolf' but 'good little girl'. These are just opposite adjectives. English makes no sense.
Big bad wolf also comes from a fairy tail background where the language is used stylistically to create a memorable character. He's not just any bad, big wolf, he's The Big Bad Wolf
Bad Wolf, Doctor, Rose
You're really stretching to pull off that reference pal
Ayy !
its big, bad wolf. the comma makes a difference.
I love that you cited Pirates of The Caribbean for “more guidelines, than actual rules”
Was LITERALLY talking with a co-worker about this phenomenon just this afternoon.
Ah - but should it be static final or final static ?
public static final int x; // :D
idk
It's strange, I come from New Zealand, and a lot of the time we break these adjective rules, without actually noticing it.
We do?
Do you?
Robotic Coffee You do?
Rohan Zener No, it is not
+Raphael Franks lmfao
I've just discovered your videos and I have to say I love them. Very entertaining and fun. Thank you for your work!
It's always hard to get your head around when you try to explain to someone why it just sounds 'off' when you have no idea yourself.
Learning English as a second language must be hell.
Nah it's okay, it's one of the easiest by a lot. The real problem for most people is pronounciation. That's because of the inconsistent spelling and because there's quite a lot of vowels to learn.
the most amaizng thing about language is how it just worked for tens of thousands of years without any analysis. now i've spent half an hour in this comment sectin, and i've gone mad.l Japanese red big balloon is sounding perfectly logical.
"to boldly go!"
I'll see myself out.
Wow, you're right. I never had thought of that before. Very cool!
We could say, "It's a RED 'big balloon' ", to someone who is colourblind, if they had said it is green.
I would still say big RED balloon, since stress signals the correction
Temba, his arms wide.
JimPlaysGames
Sokath, his eyes opened.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
Darmok and Jalad, at Tanagra!
Mirab, with sails unfurled.
Borg, their cube big! 😂
The studies I've seen indicate that this is actually rather consistent throughout multiple languages. The fact that you put _rouge_ after _ballon_ doesn't change the fact the order is still _grande_ before _rouge_. The closest adjective just wound up on the other side. Size still comes before color.
I recently saw an image explaining this and it blew my mind. Just never even thought about it before. Thanks for explaining it further.
The why is easy: the way we actually use language is to string together words in an arbitrary but stereotypical order that quickly becomes meaningful. You learn for instance, that mommy always says "good job" and never "job good" when she wants to praise your efforts, and you get the idea that she is pleased. Eventually you hear her say other phrases with some of the words the same, but some not, (e.g. "good cake" or "nice job") and you discover that words are substitutable, you can replace a word in a phrase with another word of the same category, keeping the same order, and you get syntactically correct phrases (usually). In other words, we don't actually think in terms of parts of speech and syntax directly. We think in terms of word strings that we can use as models of correct syntax that we can plug new words into to express our own thoughts. The point is that order is initially arbitrary but quickly stereotyped into patterns, because language is a patterning process. The same process governs both the order of parts of speech (adjective before noun in English) and also order among adjectives (size before color).
English speakers have lots of model sentences with size adjectives before color adjectives before nouns, so that becomes our standard order for expressing noun phrases with both size and color adjectives. The more stereotyped a phrase structure becomes, the more required it is. Since we almost never hear "red big" anything, it sounds wrong to us. On the other hand, some phrases such as "time immemorial" become stereotyped the opposite way from normal, but we still accept them and even make other phrases using the same pattern (e.g. "things educational").
Commander-in-Chief.
Attorney General
Court Martial
All official terms, all in adj-noun order, all from latin roots. This is not coincidence, folks.
Actually isn't Court Martial in noun-adj order? It's describing when a military person is tried in court
The last two are French.
@@itsmeblast But martial is an adjective.
French, in fact. Latin has free word order, but French is oddly specific about that.
@@nmatavka They are, however, from Latin roots - French is, after all, a romance language.
This is something that I have thought of quite a bit actually. Usually it comes down to trying to get information across in as little time as possible.
I have noticed, as a Canadian English speaker, that ppl do not have enough information to form concepts, and remember them, until later in the sentence, forcing a repetition of the instructions after context is established.
For instance, "Do not move the blue box until 7" is understood and remembered more like "blue box - do not move - until 7"
Now when u are in a work environment it is really tricky to say things in the order that the brain works without sounding condescending or daft(good British word there😃), so time often suffers.
I know of one word order rule that supercedes this one in English - the vowel order! For similar words there is a very specific order they appear in, which overrides the standard vowel order if it comes up. You see it in phrases like "tick tock", "ding dong", "tic tac toe" and it's why the phrase is "Big Bad Wolf" and not "Bad Big Wolf"! After chatting on it for a while me and the people I live with reckon it's something to do with how the vowels are pronounced physically (they sorta... move forward in your mouth?)
This is why I'm grateful that English is my first language
Dutch has got exactly the same order.
To me "time immemorial" has a sort of invisible comma in it. "live on in time, immemorial" is an abbreviation of "It will live on in time, and be immemorial. "
That's how it sounds in my head anyway, and if I ever said it, there would be a pause.
It actually comes from french where it's the correct adjectival order.
English is my secondary language. At school I had to memorize these kinds of rules.
In italian the adjectives are put after the word they are attached to, for example:
English: Red balloon
Italian: Palloncino rosso
Palloncino means balloon, rosso means red, other example:
English: Strange big, light blue box
Italian: Scatola, strana, grande e azzurra
Scatola: box, Strana: Strange, Azzurra: light blue (femminine since a box is female)
You of course realize I can never unsee this?!
I wonder, after 4+ years, did you forget about it?
its because of this fact of english that i love Amarican Sign Language (and physical formes of comunication in general)
in verbal english we can say 'i saw this postcard with a single illumiated christmas tree in a snow covered forest sitting by a river"
but to sign that would be "post card, i saw, .. big river scene , dusk time , snow lots, around river , right side , a bank/shore, snow cover , on left ,river side trees , hanging some , fallen some, on right ,bank more flat , some rocks, all cover snow , save tree special ,forgound , short tree, beutifull , with lights , on the lights, in river the lights too. "
look at how much more detail is in that , granted im a freshmen student studying ASL part time its not my major , but i love the way it expresses with such vivid nuance. and that its conceptual based as apposed to hard rule based.
Judging by your description; in ASL it's obviously a description of the picture on the postcard; but the English phrasing almost makes it sound like you were reading it in the dark, under a Christmas tree light.
+Nick McKenzie Not a sign language expert here, but I'm sure you could manage just as lengthy a description verbally, or describe the picture in much less detail in ASL...
That sign language in English would be "I saw a postcard that appeared to have a big river. There was a lot of snow around the river. On the right side of the bank, there was flat snow cover. On the left, there were riverside trees. Some were hanging over the river, and some had fallen. On the right, there was even more flat snow cover stretching onwards with some rocks scattering the deeply covered landscape. In the foreground, there was a small special tree. It was special. The lights were turned on, and the lights reflected off the river."
Wow that was in depth.
I wonder if deaf people are more inclined to describe images in depth. Since for them, sight is so important as a way to understand the world.
And there are some languages where the order of adjectives doesn't matter at all which is the way I like the most
0:59 Reasonable. Here, "rocking chair" is practically a single lexeme which is written as two words. "Rocking" can't be moved to the predicate (*Granny's chair is rocking) or coordinated with another adjective (*wooden and rocking chair) or modified by an adverb (*gently rocking chair) -- at least not without changing the meaning, it can't.
Yoda from Star Wars had fun messing up the word order of his sentences.
Yoda speak word order is somewhat reminiscent of German and Japanese, in terms of putting the verb at the end of the sentence. I wonder if a professional linguist was consulted?
Allan Richardson I think not.
Josue Estrada-Cordoba I don't think so either, because even people who do not SPEAK these languages are familiar with some random quotations. Mark Twain once wrote something (I can't remember exactly) about a German sentence diving into the Atlantic and coming up on the other shore with the verb in its mouth.You probably remember when Rene Descarte walked into a bar and ordered a Burgundy. The bartender said they didn't have wine, so would he like a beer or whiskey.Rene replied, "I think not," and disappeared.
Allan Richardson
*(scratches scalp in confusion)*
Nope, Yoda speaks english. It's not a mistake or anything - you can do that in english and it's what most people did hundreds of years ago. So Yoda speaks old English essentially. He makes his sentences so that the most important thing is in the front of the sentence.
Yoda speaks old English.
Old English Yoda speaks.
The second one makes you focus on "old English" which is the most important thing in that sentence.
So saying:
"Take you to him I will" makes more sense If you speak slowly and you want people to understand you clearly than "I will take you to him"
they actually taught this in my school
One of the courses I took for my MA was entirely devoted to noun modifiers. It was one of the most interesting courses I've taken.
This is something that I've noticed and I've never really forgotten it
I'm convinced that Tom Scott is an expert in this and I know almost nothing about linguistics... but I just don't agree with this. If I say "big red balloon", I mean a red balloon which is particularly big. If I say "red big balloon", I mean a big balloon which is also red. Either ordering is acceptable, and I might use one or the other to convey which adjective is applicable to a greater degree, or which was more important to myself. If someone else chose to say it either way, I would understand this subtext from them as well.
He actually covers that in the video (see rocking chair) - and from a little bit of my experimenting, every "misplace" adds a layer, that's why it sound clunky if used where not needed. If you say "red big balloon" you are talking about "big balloon" and there are many applications where that would make sense - especially where "big balloon" is already defined or has assigned meaning.
+gamwizrd1 Same here. I'm an amateur, but it seems that agrees with 'Branching' - that people mostly talk about a "big (red balloon)" and rarely a "red (big balloon)" so we're used to the more common ordering.
But when discussing a show called "(Big Brother)", it's acceptable to say "red (Big Brother)".
You know the comparison to French is funny. I'm bilingual having been taught English at home and having gone through all my elementary and secondary schooling in French for native speakers. And the way French was taught to me was a systematic focus on grammar rules, literally making you recite articles of Grévisse's grammar rules by rote. But I can't remember being taught anything at all about the order of adjectives, it's the odd thing that was left to intuition. I'm amazed there is such a reasonable rule for it in English, and it makes me wonder if there is a set of similar principles I haven't been made aware of in French.
I wasn’t aware of this rule until now either. It’s really interesting learning about your language as a native speaker because you intuitively know what’s right or wrong. My hypothesis is that people said things differently and overtime started to form unwritten rules about their native language’s slang that turned into its own new language. You can see that in English spoken in the United States verses the UK. The difference is quite large considering it’s only been 300 years apart and it’ll continue to change and grow.
Yep, I didn't even think about it until you mentioned it.
Thanks for your entertaining videos. Even for a non native english speaker there is always something to learn. I'm eagerly waiting for your next one.
Missed the joke :(
In Polish language there's no thing like Adjectival order.You can say "duży, czerwony balon" and "czerwony, duży balon" and both sound ok for native speaker. (duży mean big, and czerwony mean red).
Cherry (wiśnia) is cognate of Polish czerwony
0:55 TARDIS 😂😂
Only if the inside is bigger! 😂
There is a whole book on this exact topic. It talks about basic English speaker instinct and stuff like that. Unfortunately I couldn’t name the book for you guys!
I think that at this point “time immemorial” is essentially a noun. Immemorial is little more than a fossilized word, and is only used in that phrase. However, looking at it as a phrase, it’s possible that “immemorial” is not applying to time, but to the object being remembered. Some thing will live on in time, immemorial. It will become immemorial, and that is how it will be. While it is living on in time, it shall be immemorial, and so we say that “the phrase, ‘time immemorial’, will live on in time, immemorial.”
but why do we say "big sexy man" and "sexy little lady?" is is because of the syllabic l in little?
Carlene Panda i feel like this is really just due to what flows better linguistically
I think that adjectival order is determined in favor of our short term memory. As humans, we have a very precious short term memory. While solving a problem, we must use our short term memory as efficiently as possible before we lose concentration.
When we attempt to imagine something, we do so constructively. While a noun acts as a solid base for interpretation, every assigned adjective acts as a modifier. Naturally, some modifications are more significant than others, we place the most significant ones first so that further less significant modifications will apply most fluently. If we do not, then following adjectives may fundementally modify our interpretation, causing confusion and so a less accurate result, or misinterpretation in the worst case.
As for the order that we actually use, I have observed that abstract terms always precede concrete terms in an set of adjectives. For example 'aggressive big hippo' is used instead of the contrary, I assume so that the receiver can seperate the concrete concept immediately. Exceptionally, compound words may contradict with this observation. For example, in 'Japanese expandable aircraft' (I'm making this up), 'expandable aircraft' may be treated as a compound word. Some people insist on using dashes like 'Japanese expandable-aircraft' to point this out explicitly, because 'expandable Japanese aircraft' is more consistent with how we normally order adjectives.
That reasoning only applies to English though. Other languages have different adj. order.
Sam Eaton Other cultures probably think of other things as being more memorable or significant. And as well, to use the French balloon example, "un grand ballon rouge" could be consistent with that because a red balloon would be "un ballon rouge" and a big balloon would (I think) then be "un ballon grand." So the least memorable adjective goes after the noun to make sure it sticks in your brain. Maybe. I don't know, it's just a possible defense of Leopold's hypothesis.
It sounds like it could be right, but i think its one of those instances where correlation doesn't imply causation. I think its more simple.
I think you already alluded to the reason why we do this in the video. By having this system of how we order adjectives, we can take extra meaning from them without having to explicitly say it. It's because if we didn't have it, we would introduce into the language many possibilities for ambiguous adjectives.
Este idioma es demasiado estructurado! Creado hace unos 500 años , se hizo como una plantilla de cada tema gramatical y así quedó , lo cual hace más fácil su aprendizaje.
In my native tongue Bengali, there is no such order in most cases. It makes difficulties in learning English adjectival order.
I am a native English speaker, and I am trying to learn German, which has a much stricter sentence structure. With English, different components of the sentence can go in different orders, for the most part. German has a specific order those components go in, and that order can change in certain circumstances. So, I imagine we have similar feelings about comparable parts of the languages we are learning.
Aside from use of swears, which would be more proper:
A fucking big red balloon, a big fucking red balloon, or a big red fucking balloon?
Or does the position of the expletive change the meaning of the phrase?
I would say the "fucking" only affects the word immediately following on from it. So the fucking big red balloon is fucking big, the big fucking red balloon is fucking red and the big red fucking balloon is a fucking balloon. In all three of those the "fucking" seems to stand in for referring to it as obnoxiously that way so it's obnoxiously big, obnoxiously red or just obnoxious for being a balloon and leave the poor balloon alone you bastards it's done nothing wrong.
Consider that English uses prepositions, Japanese uses postpositions (aka particles), but English does use the interposition (where a word appears in the middle of another otherwise independant word) in only ONE well-used idiom: abso-fucking-loutely.
alasanof These things can be a matter of *life and death*. For instance, due to improper use of *"a big red fucking balloon"*, my son was born 38 weeks later.
04whim
In other words, you are using the expletive not as an adjective but as an adverb:
"Big red balloon" leads to "HOW big? F*ing big!" "HOW red? F*ing red!" "How do you feel about the balloon itself? "F*ing balloon!" In the third case, the expletive IS an adjective, modifying "balloon."
ROB, I hope your son doesn't read your last post when he grows up.
Allan Richardson it wouldn't be an "adverb"; "red" and "big" are not verbs. It would be an "ad-adjective" or something like that.
Basic rule my French teacher gave for adjective order in French is BANGS go before the noun: Beauty, Age, Number (amount), Goodness, Size. Everything else, such as color, goes after
You sir are awesome :D Keep up the good work
What about "big delicious donut"? Delicious big donut doesn't sound right.
it's just because english people used to speak like that and it stayed... its like asking why we call trees trees and not blob, there is no theory for the origin of the word tree...
From Middle English tree, tre, treo, treou, trew, trow, from Old English trēo, trēow (“tree, wood, timber, beam, log, stake, stick, grove, cross, rood”), from Proto-Germanic *trewą (“tree, wood”), from pre-Germanic *dréu̯om, thematic e-grade derivative of Proto-Indo-European *dóru (“tree”). Cognate with Scots tree (“wood, rod, stick”), North Frisian tre, trä (“tree”), Middle Dutch tree (“tree”), Danish træ (“tree”), Swedish trä (“wood”), träd (“tree”), Norwegian tre (“tree”), Icelandic tré (“tree”), Gothic 𐍄𐍂𐌹𐌿 (triu, “tree, wood, piece of wood”), Albanian dru (“tree, wood”), Welsh dâr (“oaks”), Ancient Greek δόρυ (dóru, “wood, spear”), Russian дерево (derevo), Tocharian A or. Related to tar, true.
-Wiktionary
i know there is that kind of evolution of words, but that is not the origin of the word. Why did the Proto-Indo-European choose doru for a tree?? why not ugu or blabla.
one language must have been the first and their words couldnt have been derived from previous languages
It probably came from an onomatopoeic sound that people then associated with trees.
like pigs oink cows moo ? maybe... there is no evidence to that.. some monkeys have words for predators like one for tiger one for snake... but their 'words' dont sound like what tigers sound like or what snakes sound like
Thanks for these. I've been lately worrying about whether or not I've been using words in correct orders.
Suppose you have two big balloons, one red and one blue, and two small balloons similarly coloured. You're going to arrange them so that the big ones are at the back and the small ones at the front. You might say you'll put the red big balloon at back left and the blue big balloon at back right, and similarly for the small balloons at the front (possibly with left & right swapped). That's a case where saying red-big and not big-red would be perfectly acceptable.
It keeps interesting me how Urdu, Punjabi and English are very similar to each other. Like here. I thought we'd have a different order of adjectives, but it's the same as far as I understand so far.
Just now got the Pirates of the Caribbean reference... well done, Mad Cap'n Tom.
Italian here. Adjectives can be before or after the noun, but the meaning changes. It's not something you're told and you don't even usually realise it.
Of course I'm fluent in my mother tongue, but I don't think I could explain the rule behind the decision of putting an adjective before or after the noun, _I just do it._ There's probably a complicated descriptive rule somewhere, but there's no need to teach it.
For example: you can't really say "a nice flower" without deciding the order. "C'è un bel fiore" means "There is a nice flower", where it being nice is secondary detail, while "C'è un fiore bello" means something more like "There is a flower, a nice one indeed", where you're talking about it being nice. (don't mind the difference between "bel" e "bello", that's just to avoid cacophony but only a very few adjectives need it)
Some adjectives come before, others come after, others both (usually changing meaning).
I watched a stupid rant video about something well, stupid, right before this. When I closed the stupid video, I felt bad because I had wasted 30 seconds of my life, and I will probably get more stupid videos recommended in my feed. But then I went back to the youtube frontpage, and saw this TS video that I dont even know anything about or really have any interest in. And now I feel much better having listened to Toms lovely voice and sweet mind. Thank you Tom.
I missed the two second joke but upon discovering these videos, I'm subscribing; even though it does feel like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.
If you didn't see it explained above, it was the "blue British box" vs "British blue box" and as he said that, the TARDIS from Doctor Who flew by behind him.
1:03, welcome aboard the Black Pearl miss Turner
Word order is something we get from others as we learn to talk and sounds rum if we don't keep to it. It's the same with tenses. Sing sang sung, ride rode ridden, kick kicked kicked.
This is a nice, short, informative video.
You... come on. I just processed your footnote at 1:03. "Rush... wait, really? The other two... god DAMMIT Tom."
Finally, I have an explanation for why in the computer game Slay the Spire the word order of "colourless uncommon card" bothered me so much. I was certain it should've said "uncommon colourless card" but I couldn't articulate why. Now I know it's these unspoken rules of adjectival order. Thank you for clearing that up for me.
English is my dominant language so this comes naturally to me, but I'm Indian and we learnt this in school and it was soo much fun watching my classmates struggle with this and suffer
Actually fascinating topic to me...