Adjectives can't just go in any old order

It's something you likely never thought about, but multiple adjectives have to go in a certain order.

Hosted by Dr. Erica Brozovsky, Otherwords is a PBS web series on Storied that digs deep into this quintessential human trait of language and finds the fascinating, thought-provoking, and funny stories behind the words and sounds we take for granted. Incorporating the fields of biology, history, cultural studies, literature, and more, linguistics has something for everyone and offers a unique perspective on what it means to be human.

Otherwords is a production of Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios.

[mushroomhehe]

"no one uses 9 adjectives ... several beautiful enormous vintage round periwinkle icelandic wooden rocking chairs"
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[VisionsandRevisions]

It’s really amazing that as a native speaker, there are so many complicated rules I was never taught, and yet I follow then exactly.

[almightyswizz]

This is actually the most shocking linguistic fact I’ve ever learned about my native language, English, on YouTube as a native English speaker

[miriamrosemary]

I had occasionally wondered why, for example, "three blue chairs" sounded right, while "blue three chairs" sounded very wrong. Now I know! Thanks

[EayuProuxm]

No one is talking about several, beautiful, enormous, vintage, round, periwinkle, Icelandic, wooden, rocking chairs ...
BUT THEY SHOULD BE! They're amazing and deserve more discussion.

[KaijinD]

As a native English speaker, I first learned about this order in 2017. No kidding, it blew my mind. Like you said, it's never taught. You just pick it up. It's rare for there to be a concept this important that is never taught.

[toddjackson]

I actually use this order of communication while talking to customers about their cabinet orders all the time. Some of our designs get pretty extravagant, and there can be multiples of the same part in different wood species, colors, and details on the same order.

[justjulia]

Non-native English speaker here: I was taught this is kingergarten in English lessons and then I continued tuitions with my kindergarten teacher when kept drilling this into me. Now I forgot the order off the top of my head, but when I use adjectives I still know the order.

[piotrszewczuk]

I have heard this rule of thumb, which said that the more "subjective" the adjective is, the farther from the noun it should be (ignoring Quantity, it always goes first). And so "nice" and "big" are subjective, while something like "wooden" or "Italian" are undeniable qualities, so they go last. But it's only a rule of thumb

[CausticLemons]

That's really cool, but where can I buy one of those periwinkle Icelandic rocking chairs?

[carynplatt]

Reading lots of books certainly helps! 😊

[shatiquamcleod]

The way you present information simply and thoroughly always amazes me! It’s like the Ms Rachel graduate program 😂

[happyfullfridge]

i would love a video explaining why it is like that and what the reason for a prescriptive order even is in the first place

[axelprino]

As someone who learned English as a second language I can never remember this order so I just go with whatever feels right at the moment, worst case scenario I can just excuse myself as a non-native speaker.

[PICTVS]

It’s not a hard rule, it’s just a mechanism speakers of languages naturally develop to help them parse sentences more easily. Especially with languages like English that have little inflection or agreement marking and rely mostly on word order to clarify syntactic relations

[genevieve-with-grief]

Ok I never realized this before and it’s blowing my mind how particular it is.

[orterves]

That said, if you do say them "out of order" in English, it just sounds a little weird, but it's still intelligible - and it can be humorous to do it out of order on purpose

[rwaggs]

I had no idea there was a specific order. Very cool!

[racheljensen]

That's interesting and explains why as a native English speaker I struggle. Very early in school we were taught that adjectives and items on a list had to go in alphabetical order. I still get the correct order you described wrong, having picked up it up mostly from reading

[hesham]

This is a one, good, short, contemporary, rectangular-looking, colorful, seemingly-American, (material), educational video!