Originally Posted by Andy_K

I think you may be onto something there. I'm not sure being a native English speaker would help though. I suppose all languages are like this, but I can testify that in English we native speakers do an awful lot of things by habit without even realizing we're doing them. For instance, my daughter recently told me that there are rules for the order in which adjectives are applied (according to gingersoftware.com, via Google: "Quantity or number. Quality or opinion. Size. Age. Shape. Color. Proper adjective (often nationality, other place of origin, or material) Purpose or qualifier."). This was absolute news to me, but I had to admit that if someone mentioned a "red fast bike" (for instance) it would sound very, very wrong.