Happy Thought for 25 November 2022

Have a Happy Thought: 

 

Our brains do amazing things with language. And the best part is, we don’t even know our brains are doing half of the things they do.

Especially in your first language.

 

For example, anyone that grew up speaking English will have an immediate reaction to this sentence:

Look at this rugby cow oval big leather old brown lovely ball.

 

You’re probably thinking “what is she even trying to say?!” (yes, that sentiment definitely calls for an Interrobang!)

 

Try this sentence instead:

Look at this lovely big old oval brown cow leather rugby ball.

Image: NZ National Army Museum

  

That one made sense, right?

 

It’s because of this unspoken, but always followed, rule in English: when you use multiple adjectives, they always go in this order:

Number, opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose, [noun].

(sometimes you can switch around the first two or three, if you’re using a bunch of adjectives like I just did.)

 

Seriously, try any other order, and it will just. Sound. Weird. And then your brain will just nope right out of that conversation.

I literally had to type that sentence the correct way, and then copy and paste the words into a random order and even doing that hurt my brain!

 

There’s other really weird things that we do in English. You know how when you play with the sounds of words to make up rhymes (or to make fun of something)? Like “fancy-schmancy”, or things like that? (this is called reduplication).

But sometimes you just change the vowel in the first word to make the second word. Like splish-splash-sploosh.

When you’re just changing the vowel, it’s called ablaut reduplication (you’re welcome again, Scrabble players!), and in this case the vowels always change in a very specific order: I à A à O.

Try changing from an O to an I, and your brain won’t like that either.

Badda-boom badda-bing.

(told ya!)

 

 Happy Thanksgiving to USA-ans!