[ELI5] why do we use words in order like “the cute little red car” and not something like “the little red cute car”?
In: 267
Because everyone agreed to, or have been taught the Royal Order Of Adjectives, it’s just something that a good amount of people don’t know that they know it
[Royal Order Of Adjectives ](https://lushthecontentagency.com/blog/copywriting-royal-order-of-adjectives/)
I can’t remember the exact order, but there is a list that the adjectives have to be in for it to make sense. This is not something that is directly taught, but learned through talking with people
It’s just one of the inexplicable, random rules of language. There isn’t really a “why”, it just sounds odd to English speakers to place things in any other order. Other languages use different Adjectives do have the same order every time, though, as follows:
Quantity, Quality, Size, Age, Shape, Color, “Proper Adjective”, and Purpose.
“Proper Adjective” is a category that can include nationality, place of origin, or material.
This is more strict in English than most of our other grammar rules, and it’s rare to find deviations.
Clifford the **big red** dog. (Size, color).
I want to order **three huge square French** beignets. (Quantity, size, shape, “Proper”)
I need **four good small young curved green Canadian sports** bananas to give my **two awful midsized ancient blocky red metallic seeing-eye** monkeys is a more or less incomprehensible phrase in English, but it serves pretty well to give two examples of each category of adjective and their order, if that helps you make sense of things. But again, there’s little “why” to be had. Languages are generally pretty arbitrary.
In this example you gave: the first one tells me the speaker thinks the car is cute because it’s little and red and those describe the cars physical attributes to distinguish it amongst other “cars”. In the second sentence I gather only that the speaker thinks the car is cute..and uses little and red to again distinguish which car they are referring to.
It’s one of those unwritten rules of the English language that everyone just kinda picks up as they learn the language. Tom Scott [Did a video on it.](https://youtu.be/mTm1tJYr5_M)
This is actually a rule that non native English speakers are taught but native speakers learn organically through exposure similar to how French people probably don’t remember being taught that a chair is feminine it just sounds right to them.
Languages are strange.
I speak english quite fluently, but my mothertongue is italian.
I just noticed how I would **think** the same sentence in opposite direction in each language, without noticing it.
In English it sounds natural to say it cute > little > red
In italian i would say it like “that little car cute (and) red” or “that car little cute red” or really any other combination of “noun adj adj adj”, I would change the order based on what adjective I want to enphasize, the first one would be the most important while the last one just for flavour.
Of course different language, different grammar, different rules: that’s normal… But I never really *noticed* it until now.
It just went, without actively thinking about it.
The rules of grammar are born by collective use over time. They rarely have a strict “reason why”, most of the time it’s just natural evolution that “condensates” into rules.
I’ve seen this mentioned on Reddit before and like a lot of English speakers, had no idea.
Are there similar conventions in other languages then? Or can you just say things in any order you like and still sound normal?
Follow up question, what about in Romance languages (eg, Spanish, Portuguese, etc) and other languages where the adjective comes after the noun it modifies?
Because that’s the way that modern English grammar has evolved. Not all rules of grammar are vital to meaning, but the less-critical ones are still there. Plus no-one sat down and decided what sequence to put adjectives in; it’s “just” what emerged (and you could probably do a doctoral thesis on how/why the sequence is the way it is, and whether or not it matters; doubtless someone already has, come to that). But we all know and understand the rules – even if we don’t always know that we know them until someone points them out (or breaks them).
Harry Ritchie’s book “English for the Natives” is a good read on this and similar topics.
Latest Answers