This item on the BBC website caught my attention : the correct order for adjectives is as follows:
opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose, as in a "lovely little old rectangular green French whittling knife".
"If you mess with that word order in the slightest you'll sound like a maniac, he warns in the extract. "It's an odd thing that every English speaker uses that list, but almost none of us could write it out."
Well, as a matter of fact I could!
When you teach English as a Foreign Language, this is precisely the sort of thing you have to know if you are not to lose face in front of a group of of quizzical but otherwise useless French learners.
PS. It is also the sort of thing you might learn in a blog of repute but never on Facebook.
I beg to differ! It is very much the sort of post I might expect from some of my FB "friends", along with all their usual grammatical arguments, stuff in Latin etc. I just read and wonder.
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