Hi guys! Dan for BBC Learning English here with this week's Learner Question. Find out
what it is after this.
OK! This week's learner question comes from Belen from Spain. Who asks, "May I ask which
the correct order in adjectives is?" Of course you can Belen. Are you ready? Are you ready?
Are you ready? Here we go.
When we use two or more adjectives together to describe a noun, the order that we put
them in is quite important. For example, we don't usually say an old Indian beautiful
carpet. That sounds weird. It sounds much better say a beautiful old Indian carpet.
As a general rule, adjectives are placed in the following order: opinion, size, quality,
age, shape, colour, participle forms, origin, material type and purpose. Did you get that?
It's a beautiful old Indian carpet.
If you want to use two adjectives from the same group together, we combine them with
'and'. For example, it's a beautiful old red and green Indian carpet. We can also combine
adjectives with but, and this is usually when they have a contradictory meaning. For example,
it's an old but expensive Indian carpet.
Finally, if we use 2 adjectives that have a similar meaning, we usually put the shorter
one first. For example, it's a soft, comfortable chair.
I hope that answers your question Belen. Thank you very much for writing to us. If anybody
else out there has a question for Learners' Questions, then please email us on: learning.english@bbc.co.uk.
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