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ENGLISCH/760: Questions to Mrs. Gobbledygook (125) Op-Sh-A-C-O-M (SB)


QUESTIONS TO MRS GOBBLEDYGOOK


125. How to put adjectives in the right order



Dear Mrs Gobbledygook

I wonder if you can help me with a grammatical problem I find rather disturbing. Using more than one adjective to qualify a substantive I intuitively put them into the following order: "There is a new black car", but I would never say, "There is a black new car". In written English I find this hierarchical structure whenever more than one attribute or phrase occur together in a sequence, eg "an old plastic bag", "a fine white belgian linen", "a famous African song" etc. But on the other hand there are adjectival compositions I found in written English that can be used both ways, such as "a cold damp room" which could also be "a damp cold room".

Is there a kind of rule, how I put adjectives in a grammatical order, and how to know which one is right or wrong?

Yours sincerely

Steven Babumba (from Uganda, Africa)


*


Dear Mr Babumba

Well, I must say, you are very scrutinizing. There is not much left for me to add. To make it easier for my students to handle this problem I always suggest to use the magical word:

Op Sh A C O M

I made the abbreviation OpShACOM from the capital (and following) letters of "opinion - shape - age - colour - origin and material" following the hierarchical order in which the respective adjectives are commonly used.

If you use this magical spell, you can never go wrong.
For example:



A

A
Op

nice,

distinguished
Sh

long,


A

new,


C

black,


O

British,

foreign
M

plastic




pen

author

Being sharp-sighted as you are, you will now understand why there are adjectives you can write the other way round. By using two or more adjectives of opinion to characterize a substantive the first adjective is usually more stressed than the following. So, if you go into a room, and your first impression is that it is cold, you will describe it as "a cold, damp room". The same with colours: If - in your opinion - one colour is dominating the other, you will put it first, eg "She wears a green, blue dress with little white flowers". But these expressions are not very common. I rather prefer to use the term "a dress of greenish blue" or "a turquoise dress" to avoid the preceding description.

By the way, if I may comment your punctuation, commas are generally inserted between adjectives preceding and qualifying substantives, eg:

A cold, damp, badly lighted room ...
An old, large, plastic bag...
fine, white, Belgian linen...

But where the last adjective is in closer relation to the substantive than to the preceding ones, omit the comma:

A distinguished foreign author...

Hope this is of some help,
Yours,

Mrs Gobbledygook


22. Januar 2008