FRENCH: La place des adjectifs

[orpheus_samhain]

I was told that some short and frequently used adjectives come before nouns, among them long. But French Wiktionary in point 2 has examples of the opposite. Une table longue. [...] Un champ long et étroit.

And why vieux is put before the noun and neuf after the noun?

Comments

[muckefuck]

I'll consult Le bon usage when I get home, but my intuition of un champ long et étroit is that two adjectives linked with et are considered a single "long adjective" for the purposes of this rule. ?(Un long champ et étroit seems awkward at best and may be completely unidiomatic. (I leave it up to native speakers to pronounce judgment.)

[orpheus_samhain]

Thank you. I suspect that with the second example it may be the case, but I'm still at a loss with the simple "une table longue" *scratches her head*

[dhampyresa]

Yeah, I wouldn't split up adjectives that are used to describe the same noun. Un long champ et étroit is difficult to parse.

[orpheus_samhain]

Thank you.

[dhampyresa]

For your second question, I think it's because vieux is an age adjective (as in person-age) and so goes before, like jeune: Un vieux monsieur, une jeune femme.

[orpheus_samhain]

Ugh, I always forget that there are two sets of those, for people and not-people. Thank you!

[beix_brittany]

Ceci pourrait vous aider :
http://www.ccdmd.qc.ca/media/allo_prel_042Allophones.pdf

... et que dire d'un "long champ étroit" ? ;-)

[orpheus_samhain]

Merci beaucoup! et avec des exrcices, yay!

... that it gains a descriptive and poetic value?

[wendyjoly]

On my opinion and according my university studies there are no rules, it's rather an usage. For example, when we're kid in France we used to learn to find an adjective by moving it in the sentence or even removing it totally. You can perfectly say "un champ long et étroit" like "un long et étroit champ", it's just not very used, not pretty but perfectly correct grammitacally speaking.
Talking about "vieux" before a noun, you have to change for "vieil" like : un vieil homme (contrary to un homme vieux) it's probably easier to put it after, right?
For neuf (like new?) if you put it before it's the number. Neuf sous, un sou neuf, the sense of the sentence is changed (and thus you have to accord it -_-')
What twisted language...

[orpheus_samhain]

Thank you very much! It gave me much broader look at this :) (And I've forgotten that neuf also means 9 *headdesk*)