I spent over four years trying to learn German and failed badly, losing ground every year, and finishing only with an ability to understand boys’ comic book German.
But I never could grasp the concepts behind the words, the awkward sentence structure which left me waiting for the main point until the very last few words of each sentence, and the total impossibility of understanding how native German speakers knew the gender of each noun in the German language without even thinking about it.
The last problem annoyed me the most as the issue of noun gender is gloriously absent in spoken English. I developed a resistance to German as the learning of it was far too much like crossing a field of hidden landmines and camouflaged pits into which the unsuspecting fell, assuming they had dodged the landmines. And anyway, I was always at the bottom of the class.
English may not be the only language with such a well-organized and unexplained adjectival hierarchy. Doubtless German also has something similarly organised, but I notice that in English there is no direct explanation for adjectival hierarchy, which seems to have a mysterious origin, like the tablets of the Ten Commandments.
Also, adjectives in English almost always precede the noun, as opposed to most of the Latin languages, where the adjectives are invariable placed after the noun as follows.
Opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose-noun.
“An unusual, miniature, 19th century, narrow, milk-white, Victorian, ivory, paper-cutting implement”. Or, “My beautiful, big, circular, antique, brown, English, wooden coffee table”
The above are coherent sentences, but if the order of the adjectives is disrupted, the sentence starts to lose its balance. If there are multiple adjectives to use then there will be exceptions but any significant break in the adjectival order risks its meaning, especially when the sentence is spoken out loud. It’s a hidden rule that everyone who speaks native English applies without knowing why they do or realising its intricacy. It works with abusive swearing too.
And don’t forget the Oxford comma as you get writing…