Thomas DugaroWas ist euer bestes unnützes Wissen?
Meins: Es gibt in Norwegen eine Stelle, die näher an China gelegen ist als an Portugal.
Maike Küper@dugartogo Englisch hat eine vorgegebene Reihenfolge bei Aneinanderreihungen von Adjektiven, die wir meist nur intuitiv lernen: OSASCOMP.
Opinion
Size
Age
Shape
Color
Origin
Material:
Purpose/Qualifier.
Man kann also sagen „a beautiful big old round brown French wooden kitchen table“ aber nicht „a green new big chair“.
W6KME@MaiKueper @dugartogo At this very moment I'm watching a video on the Words Unraveled YouTube channel that is discussing OSASCOMP. What a weird old square blue Japanese wooden coincidence.
This rule is even crueler than it appears at first glance, not just because it applies so often, but because it also frequently does not. Everybody knows about the Big Bad Wolf for example.
It's a brutally capricious language for non-native speakers.
Frosch B@W6KME @MaiKueper @dugartogo yeah, it's another obscure rule that overturns osascomp there: it's always 'ping-pong' and 'zig-zag', never pong-ping or zag-zig
Jost Migenda@b_age @W6KME @MaiKueper @dugartogo But wouldn’t you also say “the tall bad guy” and “the short bad guy” (when talking e.g. about movie villains)? So I think there’s something going on with “bad” more generally; it’s not just the “big bad” combination.
Maybe in these cases, “bad” is not an opinion but a qualifier, so it naturally belongs in a different order?
@JostMigenda @b_age @MaiKueper @dugartogo Exactly-it's impossible in the end to force every adjective into one of those categories, and idiomatic phrases always blow rules out of the water.
OSASCOMP is still a very strange thing-it describes something after the fact, rather than being a rule that created it.
I had a teacher who said that grammar, as a set of rules, is a hateful thing. But grammar, as an effort to *describe* usage, could be a lifelong passion.
@JostMigenda @b_age @MaiKueper @dugartogo /2 Also, adjective order changes meaning-a short bad guy is an untall meanie, while a bad short guy is someone who isn't good at being short. Meaning has to trump the rule.
@JostMigenda @b_age @W6KME @dugartogo I tend to agree. „Bad guy“ is just a fixed phrase. It works again when you say „he‘s a charming fat bad guy“, doesn’t it?