# adjective, noun order



## Manok

With the exception of mandarin most of the languages I've looked at have this as one of the features, I was wondering if there were any European languages that didn't? "LNH" instead of NHL. Or cœur d'artichaut "artichoke heart" as a couple of examples of what I mean.


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## Scholiast

Greetings

Regrettably, it is not clear to me, and possibly not to other readers of Manok's enquiry, precisely what the question is.

Among the Indo-European languages, some generally prefer adjectives after their accompanying nouns - this applies especially to the Latin-based Romance legacy, while Germanic languages prefer adjectives preceding the nouns. And "artichoke heart" is not really an example, for this is (although written as two separate words) actually a compound noun in English, and in French it is literally "heart of artichoke", so there is no adjective there either.

Perhaps Manok would like to clarify what he (she?) is asking.

Σ


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## rusita preciosa

I'm not sure I understand the question either. 

For what it is worth, Russian has a relatively free word order, so for "artichoke heart" it is possible to say both *сердцевина артишока *(serdtsevina artishoka) and *артишока сердцевина *(artishoka serdtsevina) - the word "*артишок *(artichoke)" is in genitive. The difference would be purely stylistic rather than semantic.


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## Dymn

I'm sorry but I think I don't understand your question either.

If you ask for languages which have adjectives after nouns, the Romance languages are an example (and I think Polish too). We don't say "green apple" but "apple green"; *poma verda*, *manzana verde* and *pomme verte *in Catalan, Spanish and French respectively. The order can be reverted in poetical phrases, though.

"Artichoke heart" would be *cor de carxofa *in Catalan and *corazón de alcachofa *in Spanish both literally translated as "heart of artichoke". However, there isn't an adjective there.


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## Manok

I was looking for nouns before the adjectives. I was thinking of English when I wrote the title.


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## Peterdg

Manok said:


> I was looking for nouns before the adjectives. I was thinking of English when I wrote the title.


It's still not clear to me. What do you mean with "LNH" and "NHL"?

And do you want to know if there are European languages that have the same sequence as English or just the opposite?


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## apmoy70

rusita preciosa said:


> I'm not sure I understand the question either.
> 
> For what it is worth, Russian has a relatively free word order, so for "artichoke heart" it is possible to say both *сердцевина артишока *(serdtsevina artishoka) and *артишока сердцевина *(artishoka serdtsevina) - the word "*артишок *(artichoke)" is in genitive. The difference would be purely stylistic rather than semantic.


Exactly the same in Greek:
The heart of the artichoke,
*«Η καρδιά της αγγινάρας»* [i kar'ðʝa tis aŋɟi'naras]
*«Της αγγινάρας η καρδιά»* [tis aŋɟi'naras i kar'ðʝa].
The latter is poetic and found in Greek folk songs (klephtic songs.


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## netopir

WALS has a chapter on this, detailing some generalizations about the distribution of AdjN and NAdj (wals.info/chapter/87).


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## Scholiast

Greetings



Manok said:


> I was looking for nouns before the adjectives. I was thinking of English when I wrote the title.



As several contributors have already remarked, the original enquiry was unclear. This gives but little further help for us, but I think we can safely say this. Romance languages tend to put adjectives (or attributive terms) after nouns.

Germanic languages (including modern English) tend to put adjectives before nouns.

Balto-Slavonic languages tend to run with the same pattern as Romance.

But in all three language groups, and their ancestors in (e.g.) Latin, classical Greek and presumably Old Slavonic there are clear variations for rhetorical, literary or poetic effect.

But there is no hard and fast rule, and there will be fine differences of nuance in all domains.

Σ


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## Linguoman

Scholiast said:


> Romance languages tend to put adjectives (or attributive terms) after nouns.
> 
> Balto-Slavonic languages tend to run with the same pattern as Romance.



As to Slavonic languages, I would say this statement in not generally true. It is only true specifically for Polish. For other Slavic languages, they tend to put adjectives before nouns.


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## Scholiast

Greetings once more


Linguoman said:


> As to Slavonic languages, I would say this statement in not generally true. It is only true specifically for Polish. For other Slavic languages, they tend to put adjectives before nouns.


From a Russian native-speaker such as Linguoman (# 10), I must stand corrected, and thanks to him. I'm afraid my knowledge of Russian and other Slavic languages is far too limited, and I suppose I was misled by my elementary knowledge (from singing) of 
Отче наш, Иже еси на небесех!
Да святится имя Твое,
да приидет   Царствие Твое,
да будет воля Твоя
&c.
But maybe this is Old Church Slavonic, rather than modern idiomatic Russian, and I apologise for the error and my presumption.

Σ


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## Encolpius

NHL - National Hockey League in English 
LNH - Ligue nationale de hockey in French, _Liga nacional de hockey in Spanish, etc

_AIDS vs. SIDA in other languages, etc...

I'd say Hungarian (once an Asian language) works rather like Mandarin. 

Nemzetközi Jégkorong Liga ("International Ice-Hokey League)


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## bibax

Thanks, Encolpie, for deciphering the LNH, I knew only NHL. The best-known acronym of this kind is *NATO-OTAN*.

Now I think and presume that the OP had in mind the *non-adjectival attribute*. In Czech we call it _"non-agreeing attribute"_ (= neshodný přívlastek). The adjective (as an attribute) is an "_agreeing attribute" (= _shodný přívlastek) as there is always agreement in gender, case and number with the governing noun.

Most European (IE) languages express the "non-agreeing" attribute by a noun in the (invariable) genitive case, mostly standing after the governing noun:

FR - cœur d'artichaut;
GE -  das Herz der Artischocke;
SP - corazón de alcachofa;
IT - cuore di carciofo;
RU - сердцевина артишока;
PL - serce karczocha;
GR - η καρδιά της αγγινάρας;
CZ - *srdce artyčoku* (heart nom. of-artichoke gen.);

English expresses it by the _*noun adjunct*_ standing before the governing noun (artichoke heart) which is quite an exception.

In Czech the "non-agreeing attribute" mostly and naturally stands after the noun that modifies but the reverse order is also possible: *artyčoku srdce* (artyčok is still in genitive!). It sounds poetic.

So the question could be: _Are there European languages that are similar to English in this respect?_


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## Scholiast

Greetings all

Congratulations to bibax (# 13) for having so neatly thrust through the obscurities and clarified at least what the question is.

Just two further thoughts.

(1) The OP asked about "reversing" nouns and adjectives. The question was rather naively posed: we all know that some languages tend to put adjectives before their nouns, and some after. It's not a matter of "reversal", except from the standpoint of the language from which one starts, and (say) French speakers may find "red wine" as puzzling as English-speakers find "vin rouge".

(2) In inflected languages, including Latin, classical Greek and most of the Balto-Slavonic tongues, the difference is marginal. Linguoman (#10) has explained this for Russian. But I am sure he would agree that in those languages, there are rhetorical or poetic effects to be achieved by careful choice not only of words, but of word-order.

Σ


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## Frank78

bibax said:


> GE -  das Herz der Artischocke;



It's possible but rather uncommon.



bibax said:


> English expresses it by the _*noun adjunct*_ standing before the governing noun (artichoke heart) which is quite an exception.



German goes the same way as English: "Artischokenherz".


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## apmoy70

Frank78 said:


> German goes the same way as English: "Artischokenherz".


Does this really count? In Greek we too can say *«αγγιναροκαρδιά»* [aŋɟinarokar'ðʝa] for _artichoke heart_, or *«μαρουλοκαρδιά»* [marulokar'ðʝa] for _lettuce heart_, but IMHO this is not demonstrative of the attributive noun feature, but rather of the language's ability to form biconstituent compounds


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## Linguoman

Scholiast said:


> From a Russian native-speaker such as Linguoman (# 10), I must stand corrected, and thanks to him. I'm afraid my knowledge of Russian and other Slavic languages is far too limited, and I suppose I was misled by my elementary knowledge (from singing) of
> Отче наш, Иже еси на небесех!
> Да святится имя Твое,
> да приидет Царствие Твое,
> да будет воля Твоя
> &c.
> But maybe this is Old Church Slavonic, rather than modern idiomatic Russian, and I apologise for the error and my presumption.



Hi Scholiast,
just to add more clarity to the subject, let me clarify:

generally, the word order in Russian (and in many other Slavic languages) is less strict than in Germanic languages. So, basically, it IS possible to put an adjective after a noun.
However, there is still a neutral, typical word order which sounds natural. Changing this natural word order always has some specific effect: for example it is often used in poetry, to fit the rhythm and/or the rhyme of the verse. That is why "noun + adjective" wording may often sound poetic. It is also frequently used in nomenclature or in alphabetic lists where it is customary to put the noun first.

However, the neutral word order in Russian (as well as in Ukrainian, in Czech - I am not so sure for others) is "adjective + noun". The opposite is stylistically marked.

Your example of the prayer puts noun first not because it is Church Slavonic (although, it is true), but just because it is poetic.


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## Linguoman

I would like to summarize the "adjective + noun" rules for some of the languages I am more or less sure of. Welcome to correct or contribute more:


Language
Adjective placement
English
Adjective + Noun
German
Adjective + Noun
Dutch
Adjective + Noun
Swedish
Adjective + Noun
French
Noun + Adjective
Italian
Noun + Adjective
Spanish
Noun + Adjective
Russian
Adjective + Noun
Ukrainian
Adjective + Noun
Czech
Adjective + Noun
Polish
Noun + Adjective
Japanese
Adjective + Noun
Chinese
Adjective + Noun
Thai
Noun + Adjective



Forgot to add Hebrew: 


Noun + Adjective


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## Encolpius

I do not understand what this thread is about at all...I do only understand if you stick to those two concrete examples...if you speak any Romance language you must know both noun-adjective and adjective-noun is possible, in Czech adjective-noun is in 98% but noun-adjective is possible, too, let's not analyse it here...in Hungarian only adjective-noun, in Vietnamese only noun-adjective is possible....noun-adjective is even possible in English, here you can check it...


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## Rallino

*In Turkish*, only Adjective + Noun is possible. If you reverse the order, the adjective would become a copule due to the lack of the verb _to be_ in the 3rd person:
Kırmızı evler → Red houses
Evler kırmızı. → (The) Houses (are) red.


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## bibax

Encolpius said:


> I do not understand what this thread is about at all...I do only understand if you stick to those two concrete examples...


The two examples (ligue de hockey [sur glace] × [ice] hockey league, cœur d'artichaut × artichoke heart) suggest that this thread is NOT about the adjective-noun × noun-adjective order (e.g. vin rouge × red wine). The title of this thread is most likely misleading.

The OP probably wondered why the order of the words in similar French (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.) expressions is reversed in comparison with English. 

Another noteworthy example is:

NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization;
OTAN - Organisation du Traité de l’Atlantique [du] Nord; L'Organizzazione del Trattato dell'Atlantico del Nord; La Organización del Tratado del Atlántico Norte; Organização do Tratado do Atlântico Norte, etc.;


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## discipulus11

Linguoman said:


> As to Slavonic languages, I would say this statement in not generally true. It is only true specifically for Polish. For other Slavic languages, they tend to put adjectives before nouns.


That is absolutely true for Russian. But there are situations when an adjective should be after the noun. In some idiomatic expressions, in technical drawings (that is regulated by national standards) etc.


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## Manok

Sorry for taking so long to get back to this, and thank you for the replies it made for interesting reading. I often have some trouble asking questions in a way that everyone understands, but y'all got around to it. I was looking for any language, not just European or romance.


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## marrish

In Urdu normally an adjective is first and the noun second but in situations with Persian-origin izafat it is the other way round.

Eg. سرخ  مے ۔۔ مے سرخ 
SURX MAI, MAY-E-SURX


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## Evgeniy

rusita preciosa said:


> For what it is worth, Russian has a relatively free word order, so for "artichoke heart" it is possible to say both *сердцевина артишока *(serdtsevina artishoka) and *артишока сердцевина *(artishoka serdtsevina) - the word "*артишок *(artichoke)" is in genitive. The difference would be purely stylistic rather than semantic.


In written speech. In spoken speech, even that difference is not present: you just say first whatever comes to your mind first. In spoken speech, words mix up badly in a sentence. Why could a word come to your mind before another word? Because it stands for a notion that you are willing to discuss, because the mention of this notion sets the context for any other information. Well, that is what the word order would signify in such cases. Generally, a noun in the genitive case comes after a noun in the clausal case (I mean a case that the clause inflicts on some noun in it), and an adjective comes before a noun. In written speech, the first rule is strict, the second rule is loose and lets play the considerations on the order of coming to mind that I mentioned, so concerning the pair "adjective + noun" I would say there is really no standard word order.


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## Evgeniy

I don't know the answer for the original question, whether we massively render English adjective-noun pairs as noun-noun pairs. For example, хоккей на льду (ice hockey) follows the French model; but, this is just one example.


Scholiast said:


> But I am sure he would agree that in those languages, there are rhetorical or poetic effects to be achieved by careful choice not only of words, but of word-order.


And sometimes even the semantic content. The word that comes first points out how to understand the word that comes then; using an abstraction, the first word sets up the context for understanding the second word. Sometimes, that results in interesting differences of signification. I am talking in general about the word order; concerning the specific case of nouns and adjectives, I cannot recall any such case, but I guess such cases should exist.


Linguoman said:


> Your example of the prayer puts noun first not because it is Church Slavonic (although, it is true), but just because it is poetic.


A pedantic note. I cannot accept such explanation, because the meaning of the word 'poetic' is unclear. The next question appears: what it means for a text to be poetic?


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## apmoy70

Evgeniy said:


> A pedantic note. I cannot accept such explanation, because the meaning of the word 'poetic' is unclear. The next question appears: what it means for a text to be poetic?


That its creator (poet) tries more densely than prose to convey its meaning, which means, rhyme, metre, and a number of other techniques one of which is inverted syntax and word order.


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## Evgeniy

apmoy70 said:


> That its creator (poet) tries more densely than prose to convey its meaning, which means, rhyme, metre, and a number of other techniques one of which is inverted syntax and word order.


I understand. Since the poet has to convey the meaning more densely, since he has to put the reader or the listener completely in being influenced by the words that the poet writes or pronounces, so that the listener cannot ignore any features of the text whatsoever, the poet has to put away certain limitations that writers of prose opt to follow in pursuit of guarantees for clarity, achieved by the reader's somewhat more formal approach to understanding the text; in prose, using these instruments is not even expected, because it has no goal that might be useful there. I hope that I get you right.


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## apmoy70

Evgeniy said:


> I understand. Since the poet has to convey the meaning more densely, since he has to put the reader or the listener completely in being influenced by the words that the poet writes or pronounces, so that the listener cannot ignore any features of the text whatsoever, the poet has to put away certain limitations that writers of prose opt to follow in pursuit of guarantees for clarity, achieved by the reader's somewhat more formal approach to understanding the text; in prose, using these instruments is not even expected, because it has no goal that might be useful there. I hope that I get you right.


Exactly, and knowing how rich is Russian Literature (and culture), I can't imagine you haven't heard a folk song, or read a poem with inverted word order


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## Evgeniy

apmoy70 said:


> Exactly, and knowing how rich is Russian Literature (and culture), I can't imagine you haven't heard a folk song, or read a poem with inverted word order


Well, for me the question is what is inverted and what is straight... I already said that in spoken Russian the word order may be a nightmare for a grammarian; also, I do not believe that the word 'poetic' turns on any magic that changes the laws of language use, which is why I made that comment. Laws of language use are the same, only instruments of conveying the ideas may be different... And as for noun+adjective pairs (as opposed to clausal noun + genitive noun pairs), which order is the default one even in a prosaic text depends on the exact sentence.


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## DarkChild

In Bulgarian it's usually adjective + noun, but the inverse is also possible and widely used. It's especially common for insults as it amplifies the effect 

By the way, the names of two letters of the alphabet - й and ь - follow the inverse pattern:

й - i kratko (short i)
ь - er malyk (small er)


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## Evgeniy

DarkChild said:


> It's especially common for insults as it amplifies the effect


Exactly the same in Russian!


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