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[soulnet]

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

But English has much more irregular verbs. Anyway, I agree (only by intuition) that learning just read/write English is easier than read/write Spanish. But Spanish pronunciation makes so much sense, to the point which is quite close to each letter having a single pronunciation. English writing and speaking seems close to totally unrelated, especially for beginners.

The "ough" ending has lots of different pronounciations: hicough, though, tough, borough, through are at least 5, and I seem to recall reading there were 8 different, but I cannot remember them.

Also noteworthy (relatively to this whole thread anyway) is that the difference between US English and British English (in word common usage, not in pronunciation) is almost nonexistent compared to the difference between Spain, Mexican, Argentinian and Chilean Spanish.

[ConMan]

Well, Japanese has a bajillion different conjugations...

Many of which depend on the relative social status of the speaker, audience and subject of discussion and the demographics of the speaker. And some of them are more like set phrases you apply to the verb - I'd love to know whose bright idea it was to decide that the way to say "I must do it" translates more directly as "If is not allowed to come to pass that I am to not do it".

[WanderingWinder]

I don't think this is a rule. The first two examples you give definitely feel wrong to change, I am not sure that I would think a thing of the third one, but more than that there are a bunch of examples where it doesn't really matter:

My old dirty hairy brush
My old hairy dirty brush
My dirty hairy old brush
My hairy dirty old brush
My hairy old dirty brush
My dirty hairy old brush

Now, which one of these is right? A couple of them sound a little better to me, but not anything really clear.

Now, numbers pretty much always seem to come first - but I think that's because it's principally a noun. The class of word that French, Italian, etc. belong to (the name for which escapes my mind at the moment) *typically* feel like they should go last, but I don't think this is a hard-and-fast thing: given a lineup of 7 old men, saying "The French old man is the one I'm looking for." seems ok, though admittedly this has more to do with collapsing of "old man" into a single concept than anything else, and "Old French man" definitely seems fine and perhaps more normal.

I think for the most part, it has to do with how much differentiation each adjective gives you/how normal the combination is, and I don't think it's a hard-and-fast rule. Probably a style-guide kind of thing.

[eHalcyon]

The Wikipedia page (linked in OP) has a section on adjective order and how it works in English. Where the order isn't entirely clear, as in your example, it's probably because multiple adjectives belong to the same class and thus do not have ordering relative to each other.

For your example, I feel like these adjectives should be separated with commas... except maybe for "old" if it goes at the end.   

[WalrusMcFishSr]

I wonder how much of this is influenced by phonetics as well. Certain combinations of word classes may "roll off the tongue" more fluidly on average than others, and perhaps that co-evolved with the development of the grammar.

[AJD]

Now, numbers pretty much always seem to come first - but I think that's because it's principally a noun.

Naw, nouns do the opposite—they always come at the end. But numbers have a special position all their own between determiners (e.g. the, that, our) and adjectives. Well, maybe not all their own; there's a few other similar things that occupy the same position as numbers, like many, I think.

[Asper]

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

It has, but that's about words in a sentence, not about adjectives. In german "I was home alone yesterday" would be "I was yesterday alone home."

Adjectives have not that much of an order, but numbers are first usually.

[Polk5440]

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

But English has much many more irregular verbs.

FTFY. Oh, the quirks of English.

[Polk5440]

Huh, it is interesting to think about.

So, I remember from High School English it was drilled in our heads to separate "equal adjectives" with commas (commas substitute for the word "and"). So there's that.

antique rocking chair = antique (rocking chair) but not antique and rocking chair or rocking (antique chair). The fact that it is a chair that rocks is more important to the nature of the chair than it being antique.

jolly green giant = jolly (green giant). Green is more important than jolly. You could refer to a sad green giant later and be referring to the same giant but not if you refer to a jolly red giant. The color is more important.

smooth, glossy paper = smooth and glossy paper but not smooth (glossy paper).

So, is importance to the nature of the noun what defines the ordering?

We also used Elements of Style by Strunck and White in HS which gives the advice "write with nouns and verbs, not with adjectives and adverbs" if I remember correctly. Not using adjectives would definitely get around the problem. As a side note -- I read Stephen King's autobiography recently and he really takes this advice to heart in his writing.

[soulnet]

But English has much many more irregular verbs.

FTFY. Oh, the quirks of English.

What if I meant the verbs in English are, for the most part, more irregular?

EDIT: Spanish also has differences between countable and uncountable, so my only excuse are that the differences are expressed quite differently.

[Voltaire]

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.
[/quote]

So what's the difference between grammar and style? Can you give an example of each?

[eHalcyon]

antique rocking chair = antique (rocking chair) but not antique and rocking chair or rocking (antique chair). The fact that it is a chair that rocks is more important to the nature of the chair than it being antique.

"I went to the flea market and bought this rocking antique chair!"  Still works, just has a different meaning.

But English has much many more irregular verbs.

FTFY. Oh, the quirks of English.

What if I meant the verbs in English are, for the most part, more irregular?

Irregularer!

[AJD]

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.

So what's the difference between grammar and style? Can you give an example of each?

Grammar is the set of rules, learned mostly subconsciously in childhood, that controls how the brain produces and understands language.

Style is participation in a set of social conventions having to do with what linguistic behavior is considered more or less appropriate for what social conventions.

For instance, the English language has a suffix -ing, found in words like walking and talking, which is sometimes pronounced -ing and sometimes pronounced -in'. That's grammar.

The -in' pronunciation of that suffix is more likely to be used in informal situations than in formal or careful situations. That's style.

[popsofctown]

How often do you get a chance to screw it up? I feel like I rarely use two adjectives on the same noun in conversation.

[SirPeebles]

How often do you get a chance to screw it up? I feel like I rarely use two adjectives on the same noun in conversation.

You did it right there.  I'm not sure if it was intentional or not.

[AJD]

How often do you get a chance to screw it up? I feel like I rarely use two adjectives on the same noun in conversation.

You did it right there.  I'm not sure if it was intentional or not.

Wait, where?

[SirPeebles]

"the" and "same" are both adjectives. 

[AJD]

"the" and "same" are both adjectives.

The is not an adjective.

(I'm not 100% sure about same either, to be honest; if it's an adjective it's a pretty oddball one. But the is not an adjective. Seriously, there's absolutely no ambiguity about this.)

[theory]

"the" and "same" are both adjectives.

The is not an adjective.

(I'm not 100% sure about same either, to be honest; if it's an adjective it's a pretty oddball one. But the is not an adjective. Seriously, there's absolutely no ambiguity about this.)

Traditionally in English, an article is usually considered to be a type of adjective. In some languages, articles are a special part of speech, which cannot easily be combined with other parts of speech. It is also possible for articles to be part of another part of speech category such as a determiner, an English part of speech category that combines articles and demonstratives (such as 'this' and 'that').

Linguists today distinguish determiners from adjectives, considering them to be two separate parts of speech (or lexical categories), but formerly determiners were considered to be adjectives in some of their uses. In English dictionaries, which typically still do not treat determiners as their own part of speech, determiners are often recognizable by being listed both as adjectives and as pronouns. Determiners are words that are neither nouns nor pronouns, yet reference a thing already in context. Determiners generally do this by indicating definiteness (as in a vs. the), quantity (as in one vs. some vs. many), or another such property.

They are nevertheless part of the "adjective order" rule: they always go first in any list of adjectives.  No one would say "same the noun", even though there's no reason the article has to go first.

[AJD]

The is not an adjective.

Traditionally in English, an article is usually considered to be a type of adjective. In some languages, articles are a special part of speech, which cannot easily be combined with other parts of speech. It is also possible for articles to be part of another part of speech category such as a determiner, an English part of speech category that combines articles and demonstratives (such as 'this' and 'that').

Traditionally, in English, a whale is considered to be a type of fish.

They are nevertheless part of the "adjective order" rule: they always go first in any list of adjectives.  No one would say "same the noun", even though there's no reason the article has to go first.

No, it's a separate rule, unrelated to the adjective-order rule. The adjective-order rule is about ordering elements of like type; the rule that determiners occur at the beginning of a noun phrase is about the relative order among elements of different types.

[SirPeebles]

You mean a whale isn't a fish?  Well that blows.

[Polk5440]

antique rocking chair = antique (rocking chair) but not antique and rocking chair or rocking (antique chair). The fact that it is a chair that rocks is more important to the nature of the chair than it being antique.

"I went to the flea market and bought this rocking antique chair!"  Still works, just has a different meaning.

 

[Kuildeous]

Huh, I never thought of articles as adjectives, but it does make a certain amount of sense. After all, you only use articles for nouns, so they have the same restriction as adjectives.

I'd say articles have greater restriction for the article would always precede the adjectives describing that noun. In fact, I would speculate that the grammatical definition of an article has to place it at the beginning of an adjective-noun combo.

It is interesting, though, how we just know that adjectives sound better in a certain order. I wouldn't say it's untaught, though. When we write papers, the teacher will tell us if a sentence sounds awkward or confusing. It's probably just a bit more subtle in how it's taught.

[AJD]

Huh, I never thought of articles as adjectives, but it does make a certain amount of sense.

NO

IT DOES NOT MAKE AN AMOUNT OF SENSE

AAAARGH

It is interesting, though, how we just know that adjectives sound better in a certain order. I wouldn't say it's untaught, though. When we write papers, the teacher will tell us if a sentence sounds awkward or confusing. It's probably just a bit more subtle in how it's taught.

No, I'm pretty sure this is untaught. This isn't a kind of error a teacher would correct, because it's not the kind of error English speakers make to begin with. (Or at least, no more frequently than they break other untaught grammatical rules, just as a result of miscellaneous speech errors, losing track of what they're saying, and so on.)

[Kirian]

Huh, I never thought of articles as adjectives, but it does make a certain amount of sense.

NO

IT DOES NOT MAKE AN AMOUNT OF SENSE

Technically, "none" is an amount.

That said, as recently as 1990, high school students were being taught that articles were adjectives.  Hopefully that's changed--it always did seem a bit silly, but I guess that's part of pigeonholing words into seven parts of speech.