We bet you never even knew you did this.
The English language would break your heart. Our hearts go out to those braving learning it from scratch, as even those of us who were brought up with it find it a nightmare at times. But, as it turns out, some of the English language rules are so ingrained in our minds that we use them without knowing.
Take for example the order in which you place adjectives, before a coinciding noun. Turns out, that in order to correctly order your nouns they have to obey the following grammatical rule:
Opinion – size – age – shape – colour – origin – material – purpose – noun
Turns out it’s something we know, but something we don’t know we know. You know?
We can thank New York Times Editor Matthew Anderson for this piece of information which he discovered in the book The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase written by Mark Forsyth in 2013.
Things native English speakers know, but don't know we know: pic.twitter.com/Ex0Ui9oBSL
— Matthew Anderson (@MattAndersonNYT) September 3, 2016
While this is easily overthought, it’s actually something native English speakers do without realising. For example, you would never say ”a French rectangular red old book”, but rather ”an old rectangular red French book.”
See? We told you you knew already.
What a time to be grammatically accurate.
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