I read an article a few weeks ago and it made me think!Before reading the article, I had never given much thought to the ordering of adjectives in a sentence. Strangely enough, I don't think I have ever studied this either (even though half of my first degree was Linguistics!!)
So, when I stumbled across the article, I read it with great interest.
Basically, the premise of the article was that, as native English speaker, the ordering of adjectives is something we simply do instinctively. "Gosh," I thought, "that's quite impressive!" At first, I couldn't quite believe what I was reading, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised the writer was quite correct.
The rule is that multiple adjectives are always ranked accordingly: opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose. Unlike many laws of grammar or syntax, this one is virtually inviolable, even in informal speech. You simply can’t say My Greek Fat Big Wedding, or leather walking brown boots. And yet until last week, I had no idea such a rule existed.
