07/03/2008

ADJECTIVES - and their position

General Information (specially for beginners)
Adjectives are invariable, i.e. they do not change according to the gender and do not take the plural (eg. A young boy, a young girl, young boys, young girls)
Adjectives are usually placed before the noun they describe (eg. A big town), but they can also go after certain verbs (eg. This town is big).

Position of Adjectives
When more than one adjective is used, the order in which you place them is important. Opinion adjectives come first (nice, interesting, ugly, etc.) and they are followed by fact adjectives (long, old, expensive, etc.)
eg. I bought a nice new shirt last week
We don't normally use more than one opinion adjective, but we often use more than one fact adjective. The relative position of fact adjectives is as follows:

  1. [How big is it?] Size & length are usually followed by shape & width (eg. a large oval desk, a long narrow building)
  2. [How old is it?] Age (eg. a large new desk)
  3. [What colour is it?] Colour (eg. a large new brown desk) NOTE: when using more than one coulour use "and" before the last one (eg. a large new black and brown desk)
  4. [Where is it from? ] Origin (eg. a large new brown scandinavian desk)
  5. [What is it made of?] Material (eg. a large new brown scandinavian wooden desk)

NOTE - We don't normally use more than three adjectives together in English. If you want to say "Last week, I bought a large new brown scandinavian wooden desk for my study", try saying it in two separate sentences. For example; "Last week, I bought a large new wooden desk for my study. It's brown and comes from Scandinavia."

Useful link ADJECTIVES
http://www.learn4good.com/languages/evrd_grammar/adjective_order.htm
Useful link GENERAL GRAMMAR
http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/grammar

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Marvellous. Great idea. Keep up the good work.
Derek

Luis Miguel Avendaño said...

I find interesting to be able to see pages with information about English language and sharing grammar with some words on the daily life. We appreciate very much the songs in English that we do at the school. We finally¡ realize that songs are like poems where singers say all te best -and sometime the worst- about love, feelings,etc.
Luis Miguel Avendaño. (English Student) Sabadell - Vallès Occidental - Catalonia - Spain - EUR...