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In today's lesson, I'm going to teach you about
adjective word order. I mean, why is it okay to
say: smooth black stones, but not, black smooth
stones? Together we'll go through everything step
by step. To help you practice I made two tests.
Yes, two. Each test has five questions, can you
please let me know your scores in the comments
below? For example, test one - five out of five.
Test two - three out of five. Please let me know
in the comments. My name is Arnel, let's start.
First, what does an adjective do? An adjective
describes a noun. Big dog. Big is my adjective,
and it describes my noun - dog. Hot coffee. Hot is
my adjective, coffee is my noun. Pretty flowers.
Pretty is my adjective, flowers is my noun. You
can see adjectives make things more interesting.
Here I have a pair of shoes. What adjectives
can you think of? Pause the lesson to do this.
Okay, maybe you thought: cool shoes, nice shoes, ugly
shoes, colorful shoes, comfortable shoes, running
shoes. There are so many different adjectives
you could have chosen. Many times in English we
use more than one adjective. So let's start with
a general rule. We have opinion adjective, plus
description adjective, and then your noun.
Opinion adjective, everyone has a different
opinion. Some people thought these were cool
shoes, some people thought these were ugly
shoes. So opinion adjectives are personal. Here
is a list of common opinion adjectives. I mean,
is something good, bad, easy, difficult, ugly?
It depends on the person. In today's lesson
I really want to focus on the grammar, so
if there's any new vocabulary please pause
this video, and use your favorite dictionary to
help you. Okay, let's do a few examples. Opinion
adjective, plus description adjective. My friend
made a delicious Italian dish for me. Delicious
(opinion) Italian (description). I mean, Italian's not
an opinion. Could I say Italian delicious dish?
No. Don't lose that important manila folder.
Important is an opinion adjective, it's important
to me, maybe not to you. Manila is a description,
and when we say manila, manila means a type of
thick paper, it's usually yellow or brown. So you
can have a manila folder, or a manila envelope,
something like that. A manila important folder?
That doesn't work. But what happens if we have
more than two adjectives? What happens when we
don't want to use an opinion adjective? Well, to
explain this I need a chart. Let's take a look. Here
we have it. The order of adjectives you need and
then your noun. Opinion, size physical observation,
age, shape, color, origin, material, and purpose. Am I
going to give you examples for each and every one?
Yep! If you understand the categories, the grammar
becomes easier. Also, depending on the source you
look at, age and shape can be changed. Today, age
comes first. Let's start with opinion. Remember from
earlier opinions always come first, descriptions
go second. Good opinions. Meh, so so opinions.
Bad opinions. I want to remind you now that
if there's any new vocabulary for you pause the
lesson. Or, pause the lesson if you need more time to
look at the information. We watched an outstanding
performance of Beauty and the Beast. The student
wrote an acceptable essay. I've had a lousy day
so far. Lousy lousy... and lousy means really bad,
you don't feel good, no. Size. I have adjectives for
small sizes and adjectives for big sizes. The puny
kitten I found clearly hadn't eaten in days. Puny
means small and weak. Puny, puny. The towering giant
chased the town's people. Towering means very tall,
like a tower. Yes, giant can be an adjective, but
here it's used as a noun. Physical observation.
These are things you can feel with your hands.
This stone is smooth, this pumpkin is bumpy, and
this cabinet is sturdy. Sturdy means something is
so strong it cannot break. Or, these adjectives can
also be something you observe, like a messy bedroom.
You can see when a room is messy. I screamed when a
bit of slimy seaweed wrapped itself around my leg.
Age. Adjectives for young, middle, and old. Not
all of these adjectives describe people. I'm using
images of people just so you can see the different
categories. At 21, Marla brought a youthful energy
to the team. If you want to get more specific with
numbers you can create a hyphenated adjective, and
these are hyphens. Hyphens. Two-day-old, six-week-old,
five-year-old, five-minute, one-hour. My two-day-old niece is the
sweetest thing in the world. Remember, your niece.
Niece, niece. Is your brother or sister's daughter.
Your nephew is your brother or sister's son. We
have a one-hour meeting every Tuesday. Important
note: these adjectives here, always remain singular.
A two days old niece? No. A five minutes clip? No.
Shape. These are the adjectives for some common
shapes. So a circle is the noun, and circular is
the adjective. When you see a triangular building,
turn right. What's the difference between oval and
oblong? An oval is a round shape, like a face or an
egg. Oblong means, two sides are longer. Color. Color is
pretty simple. What's your favorite color? Let me
know in the comments what's your favorite color. A
lot of you know my favorite color is purple, it has
to be purple. My turquoise, my turquoise nail polish
matches my outfit. We can also add: ish to colors,
when we mean kind of, not exactly. Reddish, blueish,
greenish. I bought pinkish curtains for our
dining room. You can see these curtains are
not really pink, they're kind of pink and light
brown. Origin, origin. This means, where is something
from. Mercedes is a German brand from Germany.
Without supplies, you wouldn't survive
in the Alaskan Wilderness for very
long. From Alaska. He has a Scottish accent. From
Scotland. Material. What is the noun made out of
here? We see wooden and wood. Technically, wood is
the noun and wooden is the adjective, but many
times both are used as an adjective. Woolen and
wool. Again wool is the noun, and Woolen is the
adjective. But again, sometimes they're both used
as adjectives. I just wanted to add that Woolen
(with a double L) is a preferred spelling
in British English, and wool is sheep hair.
Aluminum, aluminum. That pronunciation and
spelling is preferred in American English.
Aluminium, aluminium. That is preferred
in British English. Do you know how to
fold a paper airplane? Wrap the meat in
aluminum foil. Last but not least, purpose.
This means: what is the function,
what is it for? Like, let's take
the word: spray, spray. There are many types
of sprays. Cleaning spray, hair spray, insect
spray. We can have driving gloves, gardening
gloves, surgical gloves. Business suit, wedding
suit, beekeeping suit. You can see these
adjectives give you the purpose. Please
put on your rain boots before you go out.
You can look at this summary before I give
you more examples. He has a Scottish accent. We
have the origin, let's expand. He has a thick
Scottish accent. Thick here means, strong. You can
really hear it. It would be very un natural to
say: he has a Scottish thick accent. No. I bought
pinkish curtains for our dining room. Let's add
a couple more adjectives. I bought long pinkish
polyester curtains for our dining room. Jacob owns
three pairs of reading glasses. Jacob owned
three pairs of pocket sized reading glasses.
Pocket sized means, small enough to fit in a pocket.
Pocket sized. Jacob owns three pairs of pocket
sized blue reading glasses. Okay, after this it gets
a little bit ridiculous. When we describe something
two or three adjectives are really enough, but
let's have some fun. Jacob owns three pairs of stylish
pocket sized smooth new oblong Blue Swedish
plastic reading glasses. This one is clearly
too long. If someone wants to describe something
in detail they'll change it. Jacob owns three
pairs of stylish new reading glasses. They're blue
with smooth oblong plastic frames. He ordered them
online from a Swedish company, that's much better.
Can you think of any example sentences? Let me know
in the comments below. Use this chart to help you.
Give me a description with two/three adjectives.
Test number one: Please put the adjectives for each
sentence in the correct order. Pause the video to do
this. And here are the answers. Again, please let me
know your score in the comments below. Did you get
five out of five? Maybe three out of five on test
one? I know remembering this order is hard but you
can just use a simple acronym. OSPASCOMP. No, but but
seriously. The more you do in English the more you
expose yourself to the English language this order
will become natural to you. So keep practicing and
keep studying. It's also important for me to tell
you that this order here is a guideline, it's a
good guideline and please follow this order. But
don't be surprised if from time to time you might
hear a slightly different order. If you've enjoyed
this lesson so far, you can get all the notes in
a PDF. How do you do that? Well, you can become
a channel member. You can become a member and
download all of these notes today. I'll leave the
link to join my membership in the comments below.
You can grab these notes and start studying later
on your own at home, in your classroom, anywhere you
like. Let's keep going! We've looked at the main
part of adjective word order. You know, OSPASCOMP. But
there are still two things I want to look at that
students may find a bit confusing. Number one: If
you want to live and work in the USA you need a
green card. A green card is a permanent resident
card. I can say, Lucas received his American
green card in 2020. American green card? But
we have color and then origin? In this case, Green
Card. Green is part of the noun. A green card is
one thing. So here we say: American Green Card. Let's
do another one. This animal is called a giant squid,
that's its name, it's a giant squid. Scientists
manage to catch a young giant squid on camera.
Young giant squid? But we have size first and then
age? Again, in this case, giant is part of the name.
Giant squid. So the adjective needs to go before it.
So keep this in mind. Number two: Commas. What do we
do about commas? I mean, why do we need commas in
these sentences? Adam gave a funny, entertaining
speech. It was a dark, stormy night. Why do we use
commas here, but not in these sentences? We took
pictures of the impressive ancient Greek Temple. I
brought my new colorful sun umbrella to the beach.
Why don't I need commas here? Well, in English
we have coordinate adjectives and cumulative
adjectives. Now don't let this terminology stress
you out. When adjectives follow the adjective word
order that we looked at in this lesson they are
cumulative adjectives and they do not need commas.
I wanted to tell you about this because some
students think: oh, I have a list of adjectives.
Lists need commas. They might write: my new, colorful,
sun umbrella. You don't need commas here. Coordinate
adjectives are a bit different. Coordinate
adjectives are not in order, they have the
same value. Like, funny and entertaining. Those are
both opinion adjectives, they have the same value.
In this case you want a comma to separate those
adjectives. Dark and stormy. They describe
the night in the same way, they have equal value,
you need that comma. With coordinate adjectives
you can also move the places. Remember, they don't
follow the adjective word order. So I could say:
Adam gave an entertaining, funny speech. It was
a stormy, dark night. Both are good. You cannot do
that with the other sentences. I mean, I can't say:
We took pictures of the Greek, impressive, Ancient
Temple. We can't say: I brought my colorful, Sun, new
umbrella to the beach. That doesn't work. Here's
a little trick with coordinate adjectives. If you
can replace your comma with the word and, and your
sentence still sounds good, it's a coordinate
adjective. Like, I can say: Adam gave a funny and
entertaining speech - sounds good. It was a dark and
stormy night. Think about your comma as a little,
and. Test number two: for each sentence I
want you to think, do you need commas or
no commas? That's all you need to do. 1 2 3 4 5
Yes, commas or no commas. Pause the video to do
this. Here are the answers! Sentences 1 and
4 need commas because they are coordinate
adjectives, they are the same type of adjectives.
Remember we can do two tricks. One, can you switch
the adjectives and it still sounds good? Yep. I can
say: bright, cheerful smile. Or cheerful, bright smile.
Trick number two. I can replace the comma with
the word, and. All good. The other sentences
follow the adjective word order. They are not
from the same category, so you know they are
cumulative adjectives - no commas. Thank you so
much for watching today's lesson! Leave me your
test scores in the comments below. Give me a few
example sentences. Remember, let me know what your
favorite color is as well. Again, if you want
the notes to today's lesson become a member
and you can download them today. I hope this
lesson helped you with adjective word order
and I can't wait to make another lesson for
you. Thank you so much, see you next time! Bye!!!
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About this lesson
Learn how to use the correct order of adjectives when describing nouns in English.