I have (CANADIAN ATTRACTIVE WRITING FOUR WOOD LONG) tables.
I've tried this quiz with a bunch of people who never studied grammar, and I've found if you are a native English speaker, you'll arrive at the same answer.
If you have doubts about the order of a certain pair of words, just try using those 2 words alone, for example, ask yourself if "ATTRACTIVE WOOD table" is better or worse than "WOOD ATTRACTIVE table", and the answer will be obvious.
I also found it fascinating that there are 720 possible ways to order the adjectives (because 6x5x4x3x2x1 = 720), but just one sounds correct.
This is fascinating indeed, can we break down some actual rules from that example?
"Writing table" is idiomatic, you need to understand that the table's purpose is for a writer, not that "writing" is a verb meaning the table is authoring something. As an idiom, it's very close to an atomic construct to reason about, so that places "writing" last and closest to the noun.
One of those adjectives (Canadian) modifies another (Wood) rather than the ultimate noun, so they go together.
(Maybe that adjective could be forming "Canadian writing"? That's silly, but why is it silly? You need contextual knowledge, to know that a table's characteristics are invariant for any kind of writing, to eliminate the parsing of "Canadian writing" as nonsensical. The syntax alone can't establish that. Context is required. If the noun were "anthologies" instead of "tables", then "Canadian" could modify "writing".)
Similarly, another adjective (Long) implicitly modifies both the ultimate noun and the wood that it's made of. It would be nonsensical to have a long table made of not-long wood. So "Long" goes outside (before) "Canadian Wood". Context is necessary again here, to know that wood is a material for making tables.
"Four" goes outside everything else, as it's multiplying the entire final construct.
"Attractive" remains, and I'd argue that there isn't a single answer for it, as two other child comments already illustrate. It could go either before or after "Long", and could even convey meaning by that placement, indicating whether the length contributes to the attractiveness ("Attractive Long") or is just an incidental quality ("Long Attractive"). "Attractive" could even come after "Canadian Wood" if the speaker wanted to indicate that the material is not part of the attractiveness. That construct feels slightly unnatural, but it should because so is the thought.
"I have four attractive writing tables, all made from Canadian wood and of considerable length."
But if I must be stupidly German:
"I have four attractive long Canadian-wood writing tables." Or maybe they're not made of Canadian wood, they're just bought in Canada: "I have four attractive Canadian long wooden writing tables".
Putting more than three qualifiers before a noun makes you an asshat. I can't remember more than three adjectives in a row, get to the damn noun already.
Hm. I put LONG one word to the left of where you did. But I suppose that only makes sense with a comma after it. Yours feels more correct if no commas are allowed.
Put the jumbled adjectives in the correct order:
I've tried this quiz with a bunch of people who never studied grammar, and I've found if you are a native English speaker, you'll arrive at the same answer.If you have doubts about the order of a certain pair of words, just try using those 2 words alone, for example, ask yourself if "ATTRACTIVE WOOD table" is better or worse than "WOOD ATTRACTIVE table", and the answer will be obvious.
I also found it fascinating that there are 720 possible ways to order the adjectives (because 6x5x4x3x2x1 = 720), but just one sounds correct.