"Merele sunt tari și vechi."

Translation: The apples are tough and old.

[Lachlan_Hunt]

In English, it's more natural to say "old and hard" than to say "hard and old". It's due to English having some rules about adjective ordering.

[OwIPost]

I think that's more relevant if they're hard because they're old, as then they are "old and hard", with "old and hard" being parsed as a single idea rather than two.

If the qualities are unrelated, this doesn't apply. For example, a classical Greek statue may be reasonably described as being both "hard" and "old".

Now, as apples don't tend to get harder when they get older (quite the contrary), this seems more of an incidental mentioning of the two attributes.

[travel.linguist]

Like "law and order" or "black and white", isn't it?

[AndreiChichizola]

What are those rules?? I know English (not a native speaker) but I never heard about adjective ordering

[Aleks.Mr]

Very soon a slow old train should come from my province.

The heading letters of each word mean:

Very — value

Soon — size

A slow — most other qualities

Old — age

Train — temperature

Should — shape

Come — color

From — origin

My — material

Province — purpose

[XavierDecoret]

What's the difference between vechi and bătrân? They both mean "old". Any nuance?

[mjf92]

I was told on another thread vechi is for inanimate objects, bătrân is for living things.