• kezza596@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    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!

      • Lambda@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        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
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      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?

    • tobor@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      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: )

      • Philolurker@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        Good question. Maybe they did it deliberately to make it feel more alien and strange? Or maybe there’s another rule about the relative number of syllables (e.g., Tom and Jerry, Jak and Daxter, etc.)

      • zaph@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        That sounds normal when flipped to me. Swapping Rick and Morty for Morty and Rick sounds wrong but Mindy and Mork still has that right to it. I think they did it on purpose.

  • Ignacio@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    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.

  • irkli@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    1 year ago

    There’s no mystery here. Speech is uttered by bodies. Inhale, exhale, pressure starts high then drops. Muscles tense then release. A thousand muscles in complex patterns working together limits and shapes sound. That is the basis for underlying “rules”.

    TICK tock. Your mouth tenses for the first, relaxes in the second.

    • Acamon@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      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.