Why is it that in English we put the colour before the object but in many other European languages they put the colour after the object?

I have noticed that in English we put the colour before the object.

For instance we, would say White House but in Spanish it would be Casa Blanca (House White) or in French they would say for instance Mont Blanc (Mountain White) or eau rouge (water red) and not the way we do it with the colour first. Same in Italian, as they would say Torro Rosso instead of what it is in English which is Red Bull.

So how come English doesn't do it the way French, Spanish, and Italian do with the object before the colour? Why does English do colour first then the object?

Solution 1:

This isn't specific to colour. In English the vast majority of attributive adjectives precede the nouns they modify. In French the great majority come after the nouns, although there are quite a few common exceptions.

English is a Germanic language, like German, Dutch, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic. French is a Romance language, like Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian.

In Germanic languages, descriptive adjectives "appear predominantly to the left of the head noun" (Harbert, The Germanic Languages, Cambridge University Press, p127). Additionally, across the Germanic languages, adjectives tend to appear in a "more or less constant" relative order (e.g. colour adjectives appear closer to the noun than quantity adjectives, and adjectives describing permanent qualities occur closer than those describing temporary qualities). In early medieval times, though, the N-Adj order was "not infrequent" in at least some of the Germanic languages, although it may be that these postnominal adjectives should be interpreted as appositive or quasi-predicative "rather than postposed modifying adjectives" (ibid., pp127-9).

Posner (The Romance Languages, Cambridge University Press) points out that that according to studies of language typology, SVO languages tend to put the adjectives after the nouns they modify, whereas SOV languages put the adjectives before the nouns (as Germanic languages do despite being largely SVO). Latin was predominantly SOV (although SVO, OVS etc were also used for emphasis), whereas Romance languages are predominantly SVO. This would lead to a prediction that Latin ought to favour pre-posed adjectives and Romance postposed ones. In fact the Latin pattern is more complicated. Romance is somewhat complicated too, as although adjectives are mostly postposed, some adjectives are always pre-posed, and the amount of pre-position tends to be greater in elevated and literary language than in popular language (Posner, p146).

Solution 2:

This is not specific to colours, but all adjectives in the English language and even then there are cases when this order isn't observed.

Here are some common expressions that are structured and also pluralise in a fashion similar to that in a Romance language (the proper term for these is postpositive adjectives):

• court/courts martial
• attorney/attorneys general
• heir/heirs apparent
• poet/poets laureate

This is primarily due to such terminology (mostly of legal and military nature) being imported wholesale from French with little adaptation to suit English language conventions. I'm not going to go into the context behind it as another poster has already done this, just wanted to mention some fairly common examples that perhaps aren't immediately obvious.

More examples here.

Solution 3:

Unsatisfyingly, the answer to your question of 'Why does one language do it one way and another language the other?' is that language rules are arbitrary, they just are and there's no reason.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but the sentiment is well documented. You grow up learning the rules of a language implicitly (no one is teaching you to put adjectives before a noun), but they seem so logical and forceful and to do it any other way would be madness. It surely would be madness in English, it's just not madness for other languages.

Some languages put adjectives (like colors or other descriptors) before the noun 'white house', some afterwards 'casa blanca'. Some put them before and after (FR 'la petite(little) poule(chicken) rouge(red)'. Some put the verb before the object (EN clothes makes the man), some after (LA vestis(clothes) virum(the man) reddit(make)). There are much wilder alternatives: we (those who can read English) follow its rules, and other languages follow theirs.

Who is right? Everybody? Nobody? It's not a matter of 'right' or 'reason', as long as everybody within a community follows the implicitly accepted patterns (note that this can define the community, those that follow a certain pattern are considered a community).

A lot of times we try to come up with justifications, ones that say things like 'the reason adjectives come after nouns is because if you put it first then you don't know what you're modifying until the end forcing you to remember all the way.' or 'Adjectives should come before the noun because they are optional and you only pay attention to the end of a phrase for the important part'. These kinds of rules, as salient as you might think, are simply post-hoc rationalizations for ... wait for it ... arbitrary cultural practices. Do you give gifts for Christmas on the 24th or the 25th? Mustard or mayo on your pastrami? Encouraged to or discouraged from marrying your second cousin or not? Do you say 'He is short' or 'He short'.

I haven't given a justification for why these things are arbitrary, but I'll hint at it. That animal that people ride on called a 'horse' in English... why isn't it called that by everybody in the world? The label is arbitrary; as long as people are consistent they'll be understood. Same with syntax, ordering words (or not sometimes), as long as you do it the way people expect, they'll be understood.

Of course it's not 'anything goes'. No language just scrambles all words arbitrarily whenever. Despite what you may have heard about Latin, there are some things you just can't do in it. For example, a preposition comes immediately before the object it is ... preposing.

All I can say is that these rules are mostly arbitrary but you still gotta learn them otherwise you'll sound weird in that language.

Pax vobiscum.

Solution 4:

English has a great many words borrowed from French but, as rjpond has said, is a Germanic language.

During the 5th century, Germanic tribes people known as Angles, Saxons and Jutes began to settle in the British Isles. Over the next 600 years the language, culture and politics of the British Isles were completely transformed. Anglo Saxon dialect words form the basis of the language now called Old English, and approximately one third of Anglo-Saxon vocabulary still survives into modern English.

In 1066, the Normans invaded England (battle of Hastings and all that). For over 300 years French was the language of power, spoken by royalty, aristocrats and high-powered officials. During this time, thousands of French words entered the English language. (www.bl.uk)

Now what we have in English is in some ways a hybrid of German and French, but also having evolved over the past hundreds of years. However, the positioning of adjectives before nouns persists.