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[theory]

It occurred to me recently that English has a very strictly defined order of adjectives.  For example, you could never say "the French old tall man", but instead must always say "the tall old French man".

Does this adjective order rule apply in other languages?  Is it perhaps less rigid, such that you still couldn't say "his young 3 cats", but you could say "his young red cats" or "his red young cats" interchangeably?

What fascinates me about this issue is that:

A) No native speaker seems to have actually spent time learning this rule;
B) Yet all native speakers have effortlessly mastered this rule;
C) And I've never heard someone mess it up;
D) Even though it is immediately and painfully obvious when the rule is broken.

[ehunt]

I've heard that this is a difficult aspect of English for non-native speakers to learn.

[Drab Emordnilap]

German has some of this. There's a specific order for things like time, place, and manner. I forget though what the order is.

[eHalcyon]

Never learned this and never thought it was an actual rule.  Some orders just *feel* wrong to me, so I guess I learned it subconsciously.  Neat!

[soulnet]

I've never heard of such rule in Spanish, nor in English or French (I've only learned extremely basic French, though). Whilst speaking or writing English, no-one ever told me that I was ordering the adjectives in a wrong way, so either its quite easy to pickup the rule without knowing it, or not too many people care about it.

In Spanish there are some rules on whether the adjectives go before or after the noun, but I also don't know the rules formally.

[AJD]

I guess I learned it subconsciously.

...Like all actual rules of grammar.

[Awaclus]

In Finnish, there is no fixed word order - you can put all the words in a sentence in any order and it will always be grammatically correct. Different orders have slightly different meanings, though.

I'm still having trouble with the order of the expressions of time and place (EDIT: In English, just to clarify), and I didn't even know this was a thing.

[eHalcyon]

I guess I learned it subconsciously.

...Like all actual rules of grammar.

Nah, plenty of grammar gets taught in elementary school.

[AJD]

I guess I learned it subconsciously.

...Like all actual rules of grammar.

Nah, plenty of grammar gets taught in elementary school.

Yes, but only rules which either (a) have already been learned subconsciously by the students, and what they're actually being taught is just to describe, understand, and be aware of the rules, rather than to apply them (which they already knew); or (b) aren't actually rules of grammar, but rather just rules of formal style.

[AJD]

I guess I should qualify that "only" with a "for the most part", just to be safe.

[eHalcyon]

I guess I learned it subconsciously.

...Like all actual rules of grammar.

Nah, plenty of grammar gets taught in elementary school.

Yes, but only rules which either (a) have already been learned subconsciously by the students, and what they're actually being taught is just to describe, understand, and be aware of the rules, rather than to apply them (which they already knew); or (b) aren't actually rules of grammar, but rather just rules of formal style.

Still not sure of this.  I've helped a bunch of kids with homework and many of them seem to have trouble with these things.  Their homework was certainly application.

I don't know.  You're a linguist so you know way more about this than I do.  FWIW, I'm in Canada and most of these kids I've helped are first generation Chinese-Canadians.  I have the same background, where my first language is technically Cantonese but English is my primary language.

[SirPeebles]

I guess it depends on whether you would consider a sentence like "He don't know know any better" to be grammatically correct or not.  I mean, is the verb improperly conjugated, or is this just the individual's dialect?  There are plenty of communities where native speakers will use that sentence and understand one another perfectly.

[eHalcyon]

I guess it depends on whether you would consider a sentence like "He don't know know any better" to be grammatically correct or not.  I mean, is the verb improperly conjugated, or is this just the individual's dialect?  There are plenty of communities where native speakers will use that sentence and understand one another perfectly.

I would call that incorrect... is this incorrect of me?  Is what I'm following not grammar, but just "rules of formal style"?

[theory]

I guess I learned it subconsciously.

...Like all actual rules of grammar.

Nah, plenty of grammar gets taught in elementary school.

Yes, but only rules which either (a) have already been learned subconsciously by the students, and what they're actually being taught is just to describe, understand, and be aware of the rules, rather than to apply them (which they already knew); or (b) aren't actually rules of grammar, but rather just rules of formal style.

Some rules, especially the esoteric and specific ones, are certainly learned consciously.  Where to put modifiers like "only" in a sentence, for example.  Or the difference between "who" and "whom", and "me" and "I".  A rule like adjective order therefore seems quite remarkable: it's all learned subconsciously and I never hear anyone screw it up.

[AJD]

I guess I learned it subconsciously.

...Like all actual rules of grammar.

Nah, plenty of grammar gets taught in elementary school.

Yes, but only rules which either (a) have already been learned subconsciously by the students, and what they're actually being taught is just to describe, understand, and be aware of the rules, rather than to apply them (which they already knew); or (b) aren't actually rules of grammar, but rather just rules of formal style.

Still not sure of this.  I've helped a bunch of kids with homework and many of them seem to have trouble with these things.  Their homework was certainly application.

I don't know.  You're a linguist so you know way more about this than I do.  FWIW, I'm in Canada and most of these kids I've helped are first generation Chinese-Canadians.  I have the same background, where my first language is technically Cantonese but English is my primary language.

Okay, fair enough; I guess what I said above applies mainly/only to native speakers. That a non-native speaker of English would also acquire these adjective-ordering rules subconsciously and without instruction is pretty remarkable.

[AJD]

I guess it depends on whether you would consider a sentence like "He don't know know any better" to be grammatically correct or not.  I mean, is the verb improperly conjugated, or is this just the individual's dialect?  There are plenty of communities where native speakers will use that sentence and understand one another perfectly.

Right, exactly. They learned, subconsciously and without trying, a rule of grammar that allows a sentence like "He don't know any better" to be constructed. And then in elementary school they learned a rule that that construction should not be used in formal style.

Everyone also learns some of the rules of formal style subconsciously and without trying also, by the way. But people who grow up with educated parents and in upper-middle-class neighborhoods and so on learn more of them, and learn to apply them in more contexts.

[mail-mi]

Right, exactly. They learned, subconsciously and without trying, a rule of grammar that allows a sentence like "He don't know any better" to be constructed.

The best part about this is "He don't" is incorrect.

[AJD]

I guess I learned it subconsciously.

...Like all actual rules of grammar.

Nah, plenty of grammar gets taught in elementary school.

Yes, but only rules which either (a) have already been learned subconsciously by the students, and what they're actually being taught is just to describe, understand, and be aware of the rules, rather than to apply them (which they already knew); or (b) aren't actually rules of grammar, but rather just rules of formal style.

Some rules, especially the esoteric and specific ones, are certainly learned consciously.  Where to put modifiers like "only" in a sentence, for example.  Or the difference between "who" and "whom", and "me" and "I".

The rules about where to put only are really, really not grammatical rules. They're advice about clarity.

The rules about whom have the structure of grammatical rules, anyway, but they're basically not meaningfully part of the grammar of anyone's English anymore. They're highly-artificial rules for particular formal genres of writing. The rules about I and me are also grammatical rules in structure, anyway—although they mainly boil down to 'don't use a certain subset of constructions in formal style', since the actual behavior of I and me in the grammar is much more complicated than that.

A rule like adjective order therefore seems quite remarkable: it's all learned subconsciously and I never hear anyone screw it up.

That's really true of most grammatical rules. The reason it's so remarkable, I think, is because it's so non-obvious that there even is a rule. I mean, it's pretty obvious that there's a rule for, like, where you put the object of a verb, and how to form a yes/no question, and so on. But the language could get by just fine without having any rules about adjective order, and it takes some effort to notice that there even is a rule.

[AJD]

Right, exactly. They learned, subconsciously and without trying, a rule of grammar that allows a sentence like "He don't know any better" to be constructed.

The best part about this is "He don't" is incorrect.

In what sense?

[Archetype]

Whenever I have to type something like 'He wore the hat that that mouse had on.', it reminds me how hard it must be for non-native speakers to learn English.

[mail-mi]

Right, exactly. They learned, subconsciously and without trying, a rule of grammar that allows a sentence like "He don't know any better" to be constructed.

The best part about this is "He don't" is incorrect.

In what sense?

"He doesn't" is the correctly conjugated form of the word, not "He don't."

Speaking of verbs, English conjugations are so much easier than Spanish conjugations.

[AJD]

Right, exactly. They learned, subconsciously and without trying, a rule of grammar that allows a sentence like "He don't know any better" to be constructed.

The best part about this is "He don't" is incorrect.

In what sense?

"He doesn't" is the correctly conjugated form of the word, not "He don't."

The whole point of the above discussion is that, for many speakers of English, the grammar also makes "he don't" available. Whether it's "correct" or not for them to use it is then a question of etiquette and style, not grammar.

[SirPeebles]

Right, exactly. They learned, subconsciously and without trying, a rule of grammar that allows a sentence like "He don't know any better" to be constructed.

The best part about this is "He don't" is incorrect.

In what sense?

"He doesn't" is the correctly conjugated form of the word, not "He don't."

Speaking of verbs, English conjugations are so much easier than Spanish conjugations.

Not sure if serious 

[mail-mi]

Right, exactly. They learned, subconsciously and without trying, a rule of grammar that allows a sentence like "He don't know any better" to be constructed.

The best part about this is "He don't" is incorrect.

In what sense?

"He doesn't" is the correctly conjugated form of the word, not "He don't."

Speaking of verbs, English conjugations are so much easier than Spanish conjugations.

Not sure if serious 

Totally. Spanish has 6 different conjugations for present tense. English has 2. And that's only factoring in present tense.

[sudgy]

Right, exactly. They learned, subconsciously and without trying, a rule of grammar that allows a sentence like "He don't know any better" to be constructed.

The best part about this is "He don't" is incorrect.

In what sense?

"He doesn't" is the correctly conjugated form of the word, not "He don't."

Speaking of verbs, English conjugations are so much easier than Spanish conjugations.

Not sure if serious 

Totally. Spanish has 6 different conjugations for present tense. English has 2. And that's only factoring in present tense.

Well, Japanese has a bajillion different conjugations...