Friday Sessions #60: ‘Little Fluffy or Fluffy Little?’ – ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ The Orb

Listen to this week’s Friday Session with headphones and make sure you don’t miss a beat! The Orb, a British Band known for their sampling and mixing, released Little Fluffy Clouds back in the early 1990s. Can you hear them ‘layering different sounds on top of each other?’

And since we are talking about layering, do you know why we say Little Fluffy Clouds, and not Fluffy Little Clouds? There are some specific rules in the English language which help to put adjectives in the correct order, and although most natives would probably know it just ‘sounds right’ in that order, it can be difficult to know exactly why.

This is when we need to consult ‘The Royal Order of Adjectives.’ Yes, you read that correctly, there is actually a royal order….. If you check the list below you can see that the size (Little) goes before Physical Quality (Fluffy.) So the next time you are using more than one adjective before a noun, you can say: “the beautiful red Spanish skies” and not “The Spanish red beautiful skies.”

Order of Adjectives
1. Quantity: two, a few, many
2. Opinions / Attitudes: incredible, great, horrible
3. Size: big, little, tiny, enormous
4. Physical Quality: thin, smooth, fluffy
5. Shape: round, triangular, square
6. Age: young, old, modern
7. Colour: red, yellow, blue
8. Origin: English, Spanish, Japanese
9. Material: plastic, leather, wood
10. Type: two-sided general purpose,
11. Purpose: cleaning, washing, cooking

Lyrics:

Over the past few years
To the traditional sounds of the English summer
The drone of lawnmowers
The smack of leather on willow

Has been added a new noise
What were the skies like when you were young?
They went on forever and they, when I, we lived in Arizona
And the skies always had little fluffy clouds in them and, er
They were long and clear and

There were lots of stars at night
And, er, when it would rain it would all turn, it, they were beautiful
The most beautiful skies, as a matter of fact
Uh, the sunsets were
Purple and red and yellow and on fire
And the clouds would catch the colors everywhere

That’s unique, ’cause I used to look at them all the time when I was little
You don’t see that

Layering different sounds on top of each other

Layering different sounds on top of each other
Little fluffy clouds and, er, little fluffy clouds and, er
Little fluffy clouds and, er, little fluffy clouds and, er

What were the skies like when you were young?

They went on forever and they, when I, we lived in Arizona
And the skies always had little fluffy clouds in them and, er
They were long and clear and
There were lots of stars at night
And, er, when it would rain it would all turn, it, they were beautiful
The most beautiful skies, as a matter of fact

Uh, the sunsets were
Purple and red and yellow and on fire

And the clouds would catch the colors everywhere
That’s unique, ’cause I used to look at them all the time when I was little
You don’t see that
Little fluffy clouds and, er, little fluffy clouds and, er

Little fluffy clouds and, er, little fluffy clouds and, er
When I, we lived in Arizona
And the skies always had little fluffy clouds in them and, er
They were long and clear
And there were lots of stars at night
And, er, when it would rain it would all turn, it, they were beautiful

The most beautiful skies, as a matter of fact
Uh, the sunsets were Purple and red and yellow and on fire
And the clouds would catch the colors everywhere
That’s unique, ’cause I used to look at them all the time when I was little
You don’t see that
You might still see that in the desert

The most beautiful skies, as a matter of fact
Purple and red
Purple and red and yellow and on fire and
And red and yellow and on fire
The clouds would catch the colors