[Robadob]

My favourite example of this in English is adjective order.

Native speakers learn that it should be "big red bus" rather than "red big bus", however most couldn't list the ~7 adjective types and order they should be used in, yet will know straight away when they're wrong.

[naniwaduni]

The idea that there are "adjective types and order" is a bit misleading; the underlying order is primarily semantic/pragmatic. The order is, roughly, extrinsic to intrinsic, situational to innate, contrastive to contextual; how closely attached a descriptor is to the head noun generally implies how "essential" a property it describes. This isn't really an English thing, either—English just happens to be the language most frequently taught to non-native speakers—but adjective order actually correlates pretty well across languages.

The oft-repeated opinion-to-purpose order of adjectives has decent descriptive power, but is easily oversold; the classes described do not have consistent ordering across contexts. The same woman may be an "old American woman" when interviewed for his opinions on global politics, or an "American old woman" in the context of comparing healthcare for the elderly across countries.

The "big bad wolf" is a fairy-tale villain; a "bad big wolf" is a failure at being a big wolf.

[wizofaus]

> adjective order actually correlates pretty well across languages.

Maybe a certain extended family of languages, but not, as far as I'm aware, the language being discussed in this thread, which has no particular preference for adjective order.

[cecilpl2]

Can I call it a green whittling rectangular little silver French old lovely knife? This makes no sense.

Clearly it's the lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. Any minor reordering of these adjectives just sounds innately wrong.

[glandium]

What's interesting to me is that I'm not a native, I don't know the exact rules for these things, and yet, the first one somehow sounds wrong to me.

[wizofaus]

"Innately"? If that were true all languages would be the same.

[tomjakubowski]

Whatever you do, never flash your lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife in front of Crocodile Dundee. He'll give you a sharp rejoinder.