• tobor@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Not if you’re an EFL (English as foreign language) teacher and you needed a way to help your students understand adjective placement better: )

    • Acamon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      That’s interesting! I’ve heard aussies refer to that campaign/guideline a lot and I’ve always heard it as “slip slap slop”, which follows the rule but doesn’t make sense as the order of activities. I don’t know whether they reverted to the vowel order when talking casually, or if they said it right and I subconsciously ‘corrected’ it in my memory.

  • kezza596@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Trying to explain this to non native English speakers at my work is hilarious. It’s a rule that I don’t even know the parameters of. It just is!

  • Ignacio@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    […] opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose noun […] if you mess with that word order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.

    And if I try to stick to that word order when I’m speaking I’ll sound like an obsessive-compulsive person.

  • Nachteule@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I’m from Germany, so no native English speaker. Why does it still sound wrong in my ears? Is it the way we have to open the mouth to make those sounds, and it feels unnatural in a different order?

  • nikt@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    What about cat nip?

    My mom, who learned english later in life always says “nip cat”, maybe unconsciously trying to follow the rule?

        • Laticauda@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          But it started as one word, it wasn’t made into one word later afaik. The words also aren’t interchangeable. The thing being talked about is fundamentally nip, not a cat. In a saying like tick tock, the tick part and tock part are interchangeable. In “big bad” they’re both referring to the wolf so again they’re interchangeable. In this case the “nip” part is the same as the wolf part in “big bad wolf”.

          If I were to say wolf nip, you’d think of a version of catnip for wolves. If I were to say nip wolf, you’d think of of a wolf that bites people.

          • nikt@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Technically it started as two words… cat + abbreviation of the latin name (nepeta).

            I don’t know how i feel about this pedantic argument being my very first contribution to Lemmy, but here we are.

            • Laticauda@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              I think you misunderstand what I mean. It comes from 2 separate words being put together, but as far as I’m aware it’s always been a compound word, as in it’s always been called catnip, not cat nip.

      • Lambda@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        More specifically look up the term “ablaut reduplication”. There’s lots of great articles and honestly some pretty good YouTube videos on the subject. I’m honestly surprised how great the YouTube linguistics scene is, from Tom Scott’s language files to rob words and name explain (plus nativlang). Hours of infotainment on linguistics for those interested!

    • Acamon@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I heard that child Tolkien told his mother he’d “written a story about a green, great dragon” and when his mum told him it had to be a “great, green dragon” he was so put off that he didn’t write again for years.

      So maybe track down that story?

  • mookulator@wirebase.org
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    1 year ago

    Bad boy, fat lip, cat toy, sad song, ad lib, bat wing, say so, far right, bar fight, fort night, lock pick