Happy Thought for 5 December 2025

 Have a Happy Thought:

If you are a native English speaker, here are a couple of things about our shared language that you probably do, but didn’t know you do:

 

1.    When you are describing things, you put adjectives in a very specific order. This even has an acronym: NOSASCOMP:

a.   Number

b.  Opinion

c.  Size

d.  Age

e.  Shape

f.    Colour

g.  Origin

h.  Material

i.     Purpose

In other words, you can have a pair of lovely, big, old, round, red, Dutch, wooden, school clogs…

But you really wouldn’t have huge, pretty, black, one, writing, old, British, round, paper pad.

 

2.  When you are ending a conversation, you also do this in a very specific order.

a.   Summary

b.  Justification

c.  Positive statement

d.  Continuity of relationship

e.  Well-wishing

While you don’t have to do all of these, this is how putting all of them together in a farewell would sound:

“Hey thanks for letting me know about how John’s doing, but I’ve got to run to pick up groceries. It’s been fun, let’s do this again sometime, Have a great day!”

But you would generally not say (unless you’re really fumbling to end this conversation…):

“Let’s get together again next week, have a great afternoon! I have a meeting to go to. It was good to see you. Great hearing about your vacation.”

I mean… you can just hear yourself adding “see you later” or “bye!” or something similar at the end of that second one, can’t you?

 

And, whatever language you speak – whether it’s your first or the latest one you’re learning – as long as it is a spoken (i.e. not signed) language, you use your glottis (voicebox) to help make specific sounds.

Something we’ve only just learned recently is that different people use their glottis in different ways – sometimes people are drawing the bits together like closing tent flaps. Some people go further and pull the sides in as well, like folding a piece of paper into an envelope. Other people use the glottis muscles to close it like a drawstring bag.

Because when we are learning to speak as infants, we cannot see how the adults around us are making these sounds (unlike lips and tongue movements which are often visible), we just each figure it out on our own! And unless you’re getting an fMRI or an ultrasound* on the back of your throat while you speak… how you use your own voicebox will likely remain a mystery, even to you!

 

* Do not do this. One researcher did do this and published the results, but also wrote: “To this day, I feel a little guilty for not figuring out how to publish, ‘Please don’t try this. You’ll get a massive headache’.”

 

Thanks to Etymology Nerd (aka Adam Aleksic) on Tiktok and YouTube for letting us know about adjective order in English: Order of Adjectives and how we end conversations.

https://youtube.com/shorts/d1jH9NeNieQ?si=NzgTJRCWjPfB4Sxu

 

And thanks to the ever-amazing Lingthusiasm podcast for the note about voicebox/glottis shapes: Lingthusiasm - Lingthusiasm Episode 109: On the nose - How the...