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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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