Fun Fact About Grammar

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Despite the fact this blog remains in its infancy, I’ve already brought up the fact I am a major grammar nerd. I find it fascinating how an inconspicuous punctuation mark can completely change the natural flow of a piece of writing; in some cases the meaning can be changed entirely!  Thus I throughly geeked out when I read a post this week on A Cup of Jo.  For lack of a more eloquent phrasing, it blew my mind.  

“Adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely 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.”

 

It’s funny, we all know this rule, but we never realized we knew it.

 

Here are a few examples:

 

A beautiful red dress. (A red beautiful dress.)

A square wooden table. (A wooden square table.)

A wooden rocking chair. (A rocking wooden chair.)

A sweet four-year-old Canadian boy. (A Canadian four-year-old sweet boy.)

I hope you find it just as fascinating and you are just as impressed with yourself that you do always just seem to get this right. Go you!  Maybe you are a grammar nerd at heart as well.  

 

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