Shastadon
Pumpkin Spice JenYou: English pronunciation is random and lawless. It is a chaos language no one can make sense of.
Me:
Me:
James Webpage@ConfusedImp I am arkthepieking
Sol
Dr. Coffee@ConfusedImp that is absolutely fascinating!!
OldBrushNewPaper@ConfusedImp #language #adjectives are so much fun.
Thanks for finding this!
𝓜𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓽𝓲𝓪 (Malitia)@ConfusedImp Yes. English pronounciation is a mess, but, even without the wordorder shit in the pic, a language that has 9 verb tenses is not lawless. :3
VelociRaptor 📷@Malitia
Welcome to Esperanto :-D There are, too, complex tenses even in Passive, but I can't remember whether there also is Sequence of Tenses similar to English.
Welcome to Esperanto :-D There are, too, complex tenses even in Passive, but I can't remember whether there also is Sequence of Tenses similar to English.
FelixArden@ConfusedImp The way English pronunciation corresponds to spelling is the thing that is random and lawless. That's not even considered part of the language as far as the field of linguistics is concerned, and all the parts that are, just like every other natural human language, are highly organized.
@ConfusedImp (It's not like the spelling-pronunciation correspondence being riddled with inconsistencies is unique to English either, though it does seem to be worse than any of the other languages I have any familiarity with.)
@FelixArden When I took German in high school and Frau Saheyda explained spelling and phonemes I thought she was lying to us, hiding the real rules so we wouldn't be scared.
@ConfusedImp Yeah, while it's not quite a one-to-one correspondence between spellings and pronunciations, it's pretty close.
Ronflaix™ (inactive)
Rosemary@ConfusedImp Fun fact: while this is one of the strongest grammatical rules in English, there is one exception: when two successive words are sufficiently close to reduplication with altered vowels, front close vowels always precede back open vowels. Hence "big bad wolf" instead of "bad big wolf".
@ConfusedImp This is also why words like wishy-washy, flim-flam, mish-mash, and phrases like "fi fie foe fum" are in that order.
Pyrite@Rosemary @ConfusedImp Sort of? A blog by linguists points out there have been a number of studies showing this isn't a strong rule at all: The examples are just cases it works http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=27890
Marsxyz - sponsored@Rosemary @ConfusedImp you confused me even more.
Rosemary (@[email protected])
1.08K Posts, 56 Following, 68 Followers · Headmate to @[email protected], still figuring out how things are after a long absence. Twenty-something feminine-leaning androgynous arcaninetales taur usually with two heads. Interests in puzzles, engineering, and a good book, and curling up with a good friend. Pronouns... zhe/zhir for now, but that might change in future. Rosemary#3888 on Discord. Talk to me here before adding, please! Time: UTC-6
penartur@Rosemary @ConfusedImp but what about "small good things"? 🤔
Cathal Garvey@ConfusedImp
I love these! I recall reading about another one that encourages a vowel-based ordering of words in lists, which is similarly "obvious but why" to English speakers. It had a name but I forgot it. What book is this from? Any other gems in there?
I love these! I recall reading about another one that encourages a vowel-based ordering of words in lists, which is similarly "obvious but why" to English speakers. It had a name but I forgot it. What book is this from? Any other gems in there?
vector (book aspect)@ConfusedImp unless the name of the specific species we are talking about is "great dragon", then you can have a green great dragon.
@ConfusedImp Thanks! I hate it
elomatreb (moved to cybre.space)@ConfusedImp We were actually taught this in school while learning English, but forgot about it pretty much immediately 🤔
Shadow D. Wolf@ConfusedImp And then there're the rules about reduplication vowel order, which are why you'll never hear someone say "tock-tick," "dong-ding," or "chat-chit." XD
acb@ConfusedImp “green great dragons” could exist, but their existence would imply that “great dragon” is a discrete concept and not just a dragon that has greatness, and that this is a green one of those.
Christian 🔜 MOVING ACCOUNTS@ConfusedImp
"Green great dragons" can exist if "great dragon" is a compound noun (like "great lakes", for example)
"Green great dragons" can exist if "great dragon" is a compound noun (like "great lakes", for example)
Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️As a native speaker, who grew up in an English speaking country, I would just like to say that #English is completely wack.
➡ @@ConfusedImp @LexYeen Forbidden Knowledge is my favorite kind!
a dragon@ConfusedImp Tom Scott did a good lil video on this!! https://youtu.be/mTm1tJYr5_M
Adjectival Order: Why A "Big Red Balloon", not a "Red Big Balloon"?
Asimech@ConfusedImp Since I didn't see anyone mention this:
The photo is from a book called The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth.
The photo is from a book called The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth.
Wim 🈂️@ConfusedImp Does the "Big Friendly Giant" break this rule? Friendly surely is opinion, and Big size, and yet it is not the Friendly Big Giant.
Dan Hon
Michal Migurski 🍉@Danhon @ConfusedImp @metagrrrl “Beauty, Age, Goodness, Size" or BAGS is the set of French adjectives that go before a noun I learned in 9th grade. https://www.dummies.com/languages/french/how-to-place-of-french-adjectives-correctly/
How to Place of French Adjectives Correctly - dummies
Most French adjectives that describe the characteristics of a noun are placed after that noun. Some adjectives, however, must be placed before the noun they describe, and still others can go either before or after, depending on their meaning. French adjectives that go after the nouns they describe In general, and unlike English, French adjectives …
Ontploffing Boer@ConfusedImp I was reading this aloud to myself, as I am sometimes wont to do, and autocorrected "brown big cat" to "big brown cat" /while speaking/
Sydney “The Word” Falk 
this gets thrown around now and then and it's always refreshing to me just how much of PITA English is about this particular issue
you can really discombobulate people sometimes if you're willing to get weird and violate a few elements of that order in some way, lemme tell you what
(also, technically IIRC it's more 'quantity opinion size temperature age shape color origin material purpose noun', but who wants to talk about TWO lovely little ROOM-TEMPERATURE old rectangular green French silver whittling knives)
@sydneyfalk @ConfusedImp
…but I felt it like something natural, intuitively! With no need to learn any rules!
It should be mensioned, English is not my native tongue, though I started to study it when I was 7.
I did some research and apparently this is (to some degree) present in other languages, so maybe that's why?
I had assumed it was "an English thing", and now I have to apologize to the whole language. (It's gonna take me a while. -_- )
@sydneyfalk @ConfusedImp 'why'… it's a real question. This is not a simple coincidence…
In [many] Roman languages, and some Slavic ones, I know, adjectives stand after nouns, but order of the first may also be the same. I'm not a Romanist to say it's true, I am even not a linguist at all. 'Just kidding since being a kid'.
…A mystery of human intellect, indeed, I consider 😃
I looked at it as utility vs. expectation -- things that aren't dangerous unless they have certain adjectives (an *angry* neighbor versus a neighbor) encouraged putting some of them first, then categorization started shaking all the different possibilities out, etc. etc.
I think it's somewhat *different* in other languages, which might support this theory -- if a language was cooked in a radically different culture, shape might be way more vital than size, etc.
@sydneyfalk @ConfusedImp
*dangerous* before all another... *More valuable* for our's being before less valuable...
We usually remember best the beginnings and the endings... Emotional attitude help us to keep smth in memory better, too. #memory_technique
It seems to be tied one to another. That might be the common for all languages, despite all possible differences between cultures. So, we seem to have found two borders of construction of natural languages' syntax.
And sometimes in real life even we change that usual word order to pay smbd's attention to the most significant for the certain moment. :-) Oftenly accenting the words by intonation.
@ConfusedImp
the same order of adjectives is in Russian, though. What languages has the same order, too? ;-) what ones has not the same?
the same order of adjectives is in Russian, though. What languages has the same order, too? ;-) what ones has not the same?
Michael Lubert@ConfusedImp "The dog was big and orange"
"The dog was orange and big"
Dang it. Checks out even in that form.
modula t.@ConfusedImp sorry to necro-bump this but i figured it'd be interesting to share. some linguists apparently think this word ordering is because of how "intrinsic" to the noun that the adjectives are. it's discussed starting around 7:58 here: http://talkthetalkpodcast.com/382-theres-no-enhance-button/
@ConfusedImp i.e we say "white brick house" instead of "brick white house" because you could paint it a different color and it'd be the same house, but if you replaced all the bricks, it might not be. it's related to the ship of theseus thought experiment and the philosophical concept of "essence".