Even though saying “the big brown brick wall” means the same as saying “the brick brown big wall”, the second feels so very wrong.
In: 98
since you can use adjectives to modify other adjectives, the order clarifies what each adjective is referring to.
e.g a brown brick wall is a wall that is brown colored and made of bricks. a brick brown wall is a wall that brick brown colored and of indeterminate material.
While most of these are actually not a problem, for example the big is still unambiguous, it still sounds wrong because you expect another adjective that the big is modifying, not a noun.
So those sentences actually don’t mean the same thing technically. The image they portray to a native speaker is different.
To simplify it. A big brown brick wall is exactly as it sounds a large wall of bricks that is brown.
A brown brick big wall is a wall made of brown bricks and it’s big.
A brick big brown wall is a brown wall that seems to be as big a single brick.
It’s a trick example. “Brick” seems like an adjective here, but “brick wall” is itself functioning as a two part noun. Kind of like how “Buckingham Palace” would be a noun.
I find it fascinating that native speakers don’t learn this but it comes instinctually. Second language learners find this (understandably!) very difficult and it’s hard for me to help them learn this because I can’t describe “the why” either!
First of all, punctuation is really important. You’re going to get different answers with different punctuation, so please use your commas correctly. To answer your question/EKY5, adjectives make objects more easily understood. Ordering them from ‘more vague’ to ‘more specific’ directs understanding in a clear way our brains can relate to, from vague descriptors with a lot of other additional possibilities, to more specific and precise ones that make the object described more unique. To get to the specific descriptors, we need to get any necessary vague descriptors out of the way, and not double back to them after picking up a slightly more specific descriptor.
“The big, brown, brick wall” is less mentally exhausting than “The brick, brown, big wall” because in the second example, we’ve started with something very specific and ended with something very vague. We may as well have just stopped at “The brick wall,” which is more accurate because it is more specific. “Brown” and “big” have become filler words or unnecessary noise.
English has this thing called adjective order, which might not technically matter in a lot of cases, but will still sound wrong. Other times, it changes the meaning. In situations like this one, the order doesn’t really change the meaning but it does help the recipient understand the meaning.
In this case, you put the material (brick) before the color (brown). Only, the color describes both the material and the wall, so the color comes first. In a similar fashion, despite (big) referring to the size of the wall, it also gives insight into the size or quantity of the materials used, so it comes before the material. The result, ‘the big brown brick wall,’ is the only way to arrange these adjectives because for the reader, each adjective helps to clarify the next.
A brick wall is a wall of bricks. A brown brick wall is a wall made of brown bricks. A big brown brick wall is a wall made of a lot of brown bricks. Presented like this might help you see why, in this example, the right order helps reading comprehension.
It’s impossible to teach, impossible to learn, intuitive to know. I’ve learned 2 and a bit foreign languages and you occasionally encounter these things.
[Someone wrote a book about it in 2013.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elements_of_Eloquence)
[https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cra0akxWEAA1IAg.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cra0akxWEAA1IAg.jpg)
>adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a loverly little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac. It’s an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out. And as size comes before colour, green great dragons can’t exist.
I was a TEFL/Academic English teacher for 5 years. Grammar is a set of generalisations rather than ‘rules’, some with looser and with more irregular forms than others.
Adjective order is more collocation (sounds natural to native speakers) than consistent generalizations that might be found elsewhere.
I was a TEFL/Academic English teacher for 5 years. Grammar is a set of generalisations rather than rules that matter, some with looser and with more irregular forms than others. Adjective order is more collocation (sounds natural to native speakers) than hard and fast rules than might be found elsewhere.
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