• EvilBit@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    English acting like it’s not a fucked up language where “the big, red, round, wrapped box” is fine but “the wrapped, round, red, big box” is wrong.

    • lastlybutfirstly@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      Oh, we know it’s fucked up. I still can’t spell recieve and receipt and I have to look up pretty much every single new word I learn to find out how it’s pronounced.

      • SleeplessCityLights@lemmy.ca
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        5 hours ago

        In Anglophone school, We were taught as children “I before e, except after c.” This works most of the time, but “reign” breaks the rule. It is not even word orgin as both recieve and reign come from French.

      • EvilBit@lemmy.world
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        13 hours ago

        I thought through it and I’d wager a stiff draught that it ought not be so rough, though as I’m taught, it’s nothing to cough at that a sturdy, taut bough would snap under the weight of its idiosyncrasies.

    • farmgineer@nord.pub
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      15 hours ago

      It sounds unnatural to me as a native speaker, but I don’t know that it’s “wrong”. Even the Germanic languages as a family don’t consistently have the same order for words like that, which is neat.

      • EvilBit@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        I know it’s not wrong, but it would definitely give one away as a non-native speaker and come across very awkwardly.

      • kantor@lemmy.ml
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        13 hours ago

        Oh, no, it’s wrong grammatically too, they just don’t teach this unless you study linguistics. Most of all languages with fixed word order and some others have a natural order of adjectives. Tom Scott has a great vid about it.

        Yes, Russian has an adjective order too. “A big old blue car” would be «большая старая синяя машина», saying «синяя большая старая машина» implies that “big old car” is a specific term.