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1 Post By SoothingDave -
1 Post By konungursvia -
1 Post By SoothingDave
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Anna Chapman is a 28-year-old beautiful Russian...
Shadow is a two-year-old beautiful Siberian Husky.
Shadow is a beautiful two-year-old Siberian Husky.
Are both sentences correct?
Anna Chapman is a beautiful 28-year-old Russian with an IQ of 162, a diplomat father and a taste for the high life.
Anna Chapman is a 28-year-old beautiful Russian with an IQ of 162, a diplomat father and a taste for the high life.
Are both sentences correct?
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Re: Anna Chapman is a 28-year-old beautiful Russian...
"Beautiful two-year-old" is the natural order of the adjectives.
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Re: Anna Chapman is a 28-year-old beautiful Russian...
I agree that it's the natural order, but you could use the other one, but the first question would be why.
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Re: Anna Chapman is a 28-year-old beautiful Russian...

Originally Posted by
SoothingDave
"Beautiful two-year-old" is the natural order of the adjectives.
And is 28-year-old beautiful be the natural order of the adjectives as well?
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Re: Anna Chapman is a 28-year-old beautiful Russian...
English is a strange language; it actually requires enumerated adjectives to follow an order starting with the most common or most obvious, and moving toward the less common or less obvious.
If you wrote a children's story involving the "bad big wolf" you'd make people laugh. Big and small are more commonly used than bad, so you have to use them in the normatively-determined order: "big bad wolf."
It's the only language I know of with such empathy toward listener expectations, though Chinese comes close, in requiring times and places to be listed from largest to smallest: 2001年 7月 22日, or 2001-year 7-month 22-day, seems the best convention for dates. The English system, 9/11/2001, seems ridiculous by comparison.
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Re: Anna Chapman is a 28-year-old beautiful Russian...

Originally Posted by
sunsunmoon
And is 28-year-old beautiful be the natural order of the adjectives as well?
No, the other way around. Beautiful 28-year-old.
Adjective Order - Placement of Adjectives in Order for English Learners
Here is a "rule" for how to order adjectives. Like all English "rules" don't be surprised by exceptions.
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