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Grammar
Course: Grammar > Unit 4
Lesson 3: Adjective order and commas with adjectivesAdjective order
Adjective order in English follows a pattern that we call DOSA-SCOMP: Determiner, Opinion, Size, Age, Shape, Color, Origin, Material, and Purpose. So "My favorite big old square white French cotton gardening hat". When adjectives fall into the same category, separate them with commas (in any order): "A beautiful, mysterious song".
Want to join the conversation?
- Is dosa scomp like PEMDAS? But why does it have to go in a certain order?(46 votes)
- Great question, Bats! It is kind of like the order of operations!
I'm honestly not sure why it's in the order that it's in. Language can be kind of arbitrary that way. I think they're ordered, left to right, from least essential information to most essential information – but how we, as speakers of a language, determined that size and age were less essential than color when describing an object is a mystery to me.(97 votes)
- Is there a trick for answering questions(33 votes)
- For this section, the trick is to internalize the mnemonic
DOSA-SCOMP
:
Determiner
Opinion
Size
Age
Shape
Color
Origin
Material
Purpose
That should set you up for success, Mark!(85 votes)
- so you can put an infinite amount of adjectives in a subject?(7 votes)
- Well we normally don't exactly use more than three nice tiny old colorless adjectives :)(10 votes)
- Given I use two adjectives that belong to same "category" from the DOSASCOMP catalog, how do I order them?
Or can it just be random?(7 votes)- Try this: Write out your sentence in one way, then rewrite it randomly arranging the adjectives of the same category in a different order. If there's no difference, you're OK. If one of the adjectives is more important to the idea you are trying to express than the other, put that one first.(11 votes)
- I really like that you created DOSA - SCOMP. I LOVE dosas!
I also have a question:
At the end of DOSA - SCOMP you added a ‘t’ to represent ‘the thing’ at the end so wouldn’t it be DOSA - SCOMPT?
It may be a little confusing question so tell me if I need to explain more.(9 votes) - Is it mandatory to use that order when you are writing?(8 votes)
- In an informal setting I wouldn't say it's necessary. However, I would still strongly advise you to follow this order (especially in writing) just because it sounds much nicer and cleaner to the native English speaker :D(3 votes)
- So is the determiner an article ?(7 votes)
- My teacher gave me a different order.
Article
Name
quality
size
shape
Age
Participle
Colour
Origin
Purpose
Is this arrangement also correct, because its different from the one given in the video.(3 votes)- Yes. Your teacher's arrangement is also correct. The principle here is, "does it result in clear communication?" If it does, then it's correct.(4 votes)
- What about if you were to describe the condition of a noun? It might go under the "opinion", but if we were to say that something is "broken", when should you put the adjective in the order?(4 votes)
- Most of the pages I found on the internet, including Wikipedia and Cambridge, have the order as ..., size, shape, age, ... and not age between size and shape. One place even had "size or shape" as a single category. From what source did Khan get the order where age is between size and shape?(4 votes)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] So, grammarians,
if you're a native English speaker, the phrase
French old white house might seem a little weird to
you, if you're not a native English speaker it might
not, and this is something that I didn't really know about
before I started preparing to teach this course, is that
there is a specific order that adjectives go in in English. This is something that
I think we just pick up as English speakers but if
you didn't grow up speaking English it gets a little tricky sometimes. So the question is, in order
to make this seem right, what order do you put these adjectives in? That's near about as I can reckon it. Making this into old white French house. Because there is an order
and it goes like this. Determiner, opinion, size,
age, shape, color, origin, material, purpose, or
for short dosa scomp. Dosa scomp. Aw. Okay, that's actually kind of a thing. So a dosa is a South Indian
flat bread, and a scomp, I'm gonna say is a word for eating. It's not a word, it's a made
up word, but dosa scomp. Sounds like scarf to me. Or chomp. Both of those are verbs that denote
eating, as well as scarf being a garment, so dosa scomp. I just want you to imagine
sitting down to a delicious South Indian meal and
scomping on some dosas. So dosa scomp. Determiner, and that's
words like the or an. Opinion, this is when you're
describing something there are certain descriptors that not
everyone would agree with. So if you're looking at a
piece of black metal, everyone would be able to agree that it is black. But if you think it's cool
looking or ugly looking, you know, everything that anyone
could conceivably disagree about, that's an opinion. So, cool for example,
that would be an opinion. Size, so the cool, big,
old, square, black,. And origin usually can be where it's from. So let's say Texan. And then we have materials,
let's say leather, cause leather can be black, and the purpose. This is where we would use
what's called a participle or a gerundive to determine
what the thing is for. So if we were talking
about a lawnmower that you ride around on, that's
called a riding mower. And the last thing here
is the thing itself. So we're looking at, so this
thing is cool, big, old, square, black, Texan, leather,
riding mower, but frankly in most normal English
sentences you'll probably never going to use more than
three adjectives to describe a given thing. Like old white French house. Now sometimes, you might
find yourself using more than one adjective that fits
into the same category. So you might say the exciting,
unparalleled green dragon. And you'll notice I put a comma
there, because when you use two adjectives from the same
category, so two opinions, exciting and unparalleled,
you wanna separate them with a comma, but generally if
you're just scooting down the dosa scomp, old white French
house, you don't need to separate these non-coordinate
adjectives from each other. And we'll get more into
commas in punctuation section, but for now, all you need
to remember is dosa scomp. And if you've never had a
dosa, I strongly urge you to look up recipes online or go
to a South Indian restaurant and make and eat this delicious food. And then, you're just
gonna scomp on some dosas. So determiner, opinion, size, age, dosa. Shape, color, origin, material,
purpose, and then the thing. That's the order that
adjectives go in in English. Why is this? I have no idea. You know sometimes language can be really, the word I tend to use is arbitrary. You can call it random, if you like. This is just the way that
we arrived at this order, it's just basically through
random chance of convention. And what seems to sound right. And what sounds right for
English isn't always what sounds right for other languages. For example, the way we're
using adjectives here, we're always putting them
to the left of whatever they modify, the exciting,
unparalleled green dragon. It's all to the left, it's
all old white French house. It's all on this one side of it. And other languages don't
do that necessarily. So when you're trying to just
throw a bunch of adjectives together on the left side of
the noun, this is the order. Just remember dosa scomp. And that's how adjective
order works in English. You can learn anything. David out.