Word Order of the Adjectives
Every word that modifies a noun is an adjective.
- poor girl
- expensive house
- luxury car
Working as adjectives we have nouns and past participles of verbs.
- orange juice
- plane ticket
- broken leg
- frozen fish
But when we want to form large sentences we must follow an established order of adjectives.
1. Possessive adjectives
(my, your, his, her, its, our, your, their)
Demonstratives
(this, that, these, those)
Expression of quantity
(some, several, little, a few, a lot of, many)
Articles
(a, an, the)
2. Ordinal numbers
(first, second, third, the first, the last)
3. Cardinal numbers
(one, two, three, etc)
4. Intensifiers
(if you want to emphasize the adjective we use very, fairly, quite, hardly, etc)
5. General adjectives
Size (small, big, large, tall, short, etc)
Weight (heavy, light)
Age (new, old, young)
Qualities (nice, beautiful, durable, resistant, etc)
Shape (round, square, rectangular, etc)
6. Colors
(blue, yellow, black, red, green, etc)
7. Nationalities
(Russian, American, Ecuadorian, French, Japanese, Chinese, German, Brazilian, Spanish, etc)
8. Nouns or verbs acting as adjectives
9. The noun
| My | first | two | very | fast | black | American | motor | bikes. |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| That | last | very | long | class | hour. |
| 1 | 2 | 4 | 5 | 8 | 9 |
| Her | five | tall | brothers. |
|
1
|
3
|
5
|
9
|
Sometimes when we have to use two adjectives of the same category we have to join them with a connector (and, but, etc).
- These heavy and square cement blocks.
- Those red and blue ribbons.
- My new soft and strong gloves.
In English it is better to use two or a maximum of three adjectives in one sentence. That is the standard for people.