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The word order rules you use without thinking about it

The subject of order is by no means as easy as ABC. Alphabetical order as we know it occurs in languages used by 75% of humanity and is 5000 years old. Stephen Fry tries to discover why. And fails. Word order in sentences much simpler should be. Yet some rules - about, for example, the order in which adjectives occur in a sentence - are rather complicated. Why Jolly Green Giant and not Green Jolly Giant? And why ping pong, not pong ping?

First broadcast on Fry's English Delight, 6 August 2019.

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7 minutes

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