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A History of the Sentence "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo." (1999-2015)

181 points by mezod 8y ago

Odenwaelder 8y ago
A great example of the beauty of the english language. German translation: Büffel-büffelnde Büffel büffeln Büffel. Not nearly as nice.
- anonymfus 8y ago
  Do you say beauty ironically here?
  - Kye 8y ago
    Beautiful in the same way the cloud from an exploded star is beautiful. You wouldn't want to be stuck in its path.
- lultimouomo 8y ago
  I'd say that it's an example of a flaw in the english language: I don't know german but I think that the fact that not all words are exactly the same in the sentence will make it easier to parse. I'm not a native English speaker but I think I'm fairly proficient, and I find that I struggle parsing newspaper and website titles much more often than I would expect - I never struggle when speaking with people. I think this is due to the fact that short sentences omit articles and prepositions, which makes english way harder to parse since it doesn't have the redundancy in grammatical cues that other languages have.
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    Words being the same makes it harder to parse, but easier to speak/write...
- klmr 8y ago
  Unfortunately I don’t think the German variant works due to the verb “büffeln” being intransitive. Apart from that, the presence of inflection in German renders the sentence less aesthetically pleasing but alleviates the exact ambiguity that dogs the English example so I’d see it as a plus.
- imurray 8y ago
  But you have such nice stories in German! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG62zay3kck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG62zay3kck
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
It works for any noun that is also a verb and a place name. It might not make sense depending on what the noun and verb mean but it would be grammatically correct. If there's a town named Fish then you could substitute fish for buffalo.
- klmr 8y ago
  No town as far as I could find but several rivers called Fish. So yes, you can fish Fish fish.
  - dsfyu404ed 8y ago
    I can see a Dr. Seuss style of book being written about "smelt" since it's a noun (a fish) a verb (extract metal from ore) and when spoken it's not very distinguishable from "smelled" and both "smelts" have are relatively strong smelling.
    - klmr 8y ago
      > and when spoken it's not very distinguishable from "smelled" In fact “smelt” is a completely valid alternative spelling of “smelled” (see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smell#Verb https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smell#Verb).
jstanley 8y ago
A bit of a stretch, but there's also: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (NewYork bison [that] NewYork bison bully [also] bully NewYork bison)
- taneq 8y ago
  This rides entirely on your local vernacular having a verb "buffalo" which means "to bully". I'm not sure how widespread that is but I sure never heard it before reading an explanation of this sentence.
  - KineticLensman 8y ago
    Didn't make sense to this Brit; 'buffalo' definitely not in UK vernacular (at least not mine)
    - yesbabyyes 8y ago
      Well, the European bison never came to Britain, so you never had to suffer their buffaloing... ;)
  - thomastjeffery 8y ago
    It's in mine. Maybe not common usage, but it's there. Source: From the western US.
    - dbcurtis 8y ago
      I grew up in Iowa/Minnesota, and buffalo is (was) used there. But is it a regionalism or anachronism? To me, “to buffalo” canotes a combination of verbal bullying and deception more than physical bullying.
  - drfuchs 8y ago
    Merriam-Webster has the verb "to buffalo" as going back to 1891, with no notion of it being specific to any particular locale. The OED says it's "North American slang," while Google's dictionary calls it "informal". I've certainly heard it in conversation on the east and west coasts of the U.S. (albeit very occasionally). [Added:] For all sorts of American examples over the decades, see https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/buffaloed-by-the-verb-buffalo/ https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/buffaloed-by-the-...
0x0 8y ago
Missed opportunity for a great domain name - http://Buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.edu http://Buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.edu
babuskov 8y ago
I prefer the "ship shipping ship shipping ship shipping ship" because there's a nice picture (possibly fake, but still) for it: https://imgur.com/gallery/pB0VXKq https://imgur.com/gallery/pB0VXKq
- Kye 8y ago
  It's real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Blue_Marlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Blue_Marlin
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  It's legit. Towards the bottom is another photo taken from a different angle and a video (I didn't watch it but the thumbnail looks promising) https://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-that-ships-other-ships/ https://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-tha...
peetle 8y ago
Police is a much better word for this, IMHO. :) To spell it out, it's an adjective (e.g police car) verb (e.g. police the streets) and obviously a noun. Buffalo has never struck me as a very good verb...
- peetle 8y ago
  Obviously, police that police police police police, and those that police that group, police police police, police police police.
- michaelt 8y ago
  Here in the UK, I've never seen buffalo used as a verb, so the buffalo sentence has never seemed all that clever to me. I've always preferred the publican's complaint - "This sign is painted wrong, you missed the spaces between Dog and and, and and and Duck" - because it doesn't rely on unmarked compounds like police-police or Buffalo-buffalo no-one uses outside linguistic puzzles :)
  - drostie 8y ago
    You could tack on several more if the fragment being corrected is "...conjunctions like butandandandor..." so that they are missing spaces between but and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and or, and commas would help immensely.
  - SilasX 8y ago
    American here. Never heard anyone use “buffalo” as a verb either outside of this puzzle. “Police police” (as well as extensions) is reasonable enough: “Internal Affairs is like the police police.” “So are their supervisors like, the police police police?”
    - code_duck 8y ago
      It has a valid usage that’s somewhat archaic. I’ve run into the term in literature and old TV.
  - 8y ago
hprotagonist 8y ago
always fun. i’m fond of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had... and https://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/stonelion.php https://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/stonelion.php as well.
yesbabyyes 8y ago
Another favorite: If police police police police, who police police police? Police police police police police police. And: James, while John had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher. Also, of course Martin Gardner came up with a great one: Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
- zaroth 8y ago
  Is the first one quite right? Who police police police? Police police police police. If police police the police police, who police the police who police police police? That would be police who police the police who police the police who police police. Who (n)? (n+1). If (n), who (n)? (n+1). [n > 2] P.S. 10 edits later... Wait, is that even right? Ow, my head P.P.S. Coding this chatbot is the next hot interview question.
  - sirsar 8y ago
    (police police) [specifies what kind of police] (police) [people who do the policing] (police) [verb] (police police) [object that gets policed]. If (something)-police police (something), who police (something)-police? ((something)-police)-police police ((something)-police).
    - JadeNB 8y ago
      > who police (something)-police? This is the problem. The question is “who polices …?”, not “who police …?”, the rest of the sentence structure aside.
  - jerf 8y ago
    Police police = Internal Affairs [1]. Who polices Internal Affairs? Internal Affairs-police police Internal Affairs. As I used a hyphen myself in that sentence, you could make a decent argument that English requires a bit more punctuation in the original sentence. It certainly allows it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_(law_enforcement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_(law_enforcem... , for those who don't watch as much police drama as my family does, or who live in a place that calls it something different.
appwiz 8y ago
And then there's the 2002 Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken paper by Doug Zongker (https://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/08/14/chicken-chicken-chicken-chicken-chicken/ https://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/08/14/chicken-chicken-ch...) Such an enlightening read!
- eigenstuff 8y ago
  A true classic. Every one should read.
- jerf 8y ago
  It may not be the original video, but a video presentation of it is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk by the original author, contrary to the link's claims. It is probably the better way to approach the paper, due to the importance of timing in comedy and the fact that paper presents so much to you in a way that it can't control the timing, though unfortunately the video resolution is quite low. Plus the Q&A is pretty good. It is an amusing combination of video that is a trenchant commentary on the excessive similarity of the vast bulk of hard science papers, and a video that my four year old enjoyed back in the day. That puts your standard "family friendly" comedy movie to shame in terms of how much comedy ground it is capable of covering.
durkie 8y ago
There's also a Japanese version of this: 子子子子子子子子子子子子 Unfortunately I can only find a Spanish language Wikipedia article about it (https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_no_ko_koneko,_shishi_no_ko_kojishi https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_no_ko_koneko,_shishi_no...) but its roughly "kitten is the son of the cat, 'puppy' is the son of the lion" (we don't really have an English word for baby lion)
- yesbabyyes 8y ago
  (we don't really have an English word for baby lion) Cub?
  - pdpi 8y ago
    Definitely better than puppy, but not quite specific to lions.
    - code_duck 8y ago
      It’s specific to lions, just not exclusive to lions.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        Ooh, pedantry, my kind of thread: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/specific https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/specific I think it fails on most if not all definitions of specific. "Lion cub" is specific, lion and cub are both specifiers. But "cub" is specific to juveniles of a range of species; so I'd say "not specific to lions". Interesting then to think which species do have specific English single-word names for juveniles. Owlets, foals, and joeys spring to mind ... French has louveteau for a wolf cub, perhaps it has a specific lion cub word too? I'd imagine Kiswahili to have a specific word, perhaps?
  - codetrotter 8y ago
    Yes. I like how Google translate wrote it when translating the Spanish version; "the cat's son is a kitten; the son of the lion, cub".
codeulike 8y ago
See also the German compound word: Rhababerbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbarbärbel Which roughly translates to 'She's the Barbie of the bar where the beer of the beard barber for the barbarians of Rhubarb Barbara's bar is sold' Explanation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8 (in German, translation in video description)
- steverb 8y ago
  Lord in heaven, German compound words have always broken my brain.
  - gpvos 8y ago
    Try Finnish.
- Qwertystop 8y ago
  It's nice that the English translation is nearly as selfsimilar.
- SilasX 8y ago
  In German, I think I came up with one, but am told it doesn’t work because dienen has to take the indirect object (turning some “die”s into “der”s). “Die, die die Die dient, dient die Die, die die Die dient.” The one who serves the Die serves the Die that the Die serves. (die- sounds like “dee”.)
- gpvos 8y ago
  If we're going off on a tangent: in Dutch, you can have a sentence ending in seven infinitives: "Ik zou hem wel eens hebben willen zien durven blijven staan kijken." (I would have liked to see him dare to stay stand watching.) (Although Dutch and German syntax are almost identical, this doesn't work in German.)
  - kirkules 8y ago
    In English as well you can build sentences like "It's you I would love to love to love ... to love!", with arbitrarily many terminal infinitives.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
drewg123 8y ago
I just wish my alma mater's website could make the front page of HN for something other than this!
dwighttk 8y ago
Buffalo * 10
- davrosthedalek 8y ago
  No plus sign, so buffalo^10 :)
  - dwighttk 8y ago
    yes
timstorer 8y ago
See also the palindrome "Bob bob bob bob bob". https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=shs1DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=A+Plenum+of+Palindromes+for+Lewis+Carroll+A+Plenum+of+Palindromes+for+Lewis+Carroll&source=bl&ots=mYdUI6EyOJ&sig=ZceJl7Ilco-4TFiZ3n_avbzRWjE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwin35mGhcXeAhXMAsAKHUQ4AxMQ6AEwAnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=A%20Plenum%20of%20Palindromes%20for%20Lewis%20Carroll%20A%20Plenum%20of%20Palindromes%20for%20Lewis%20Carroll&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=shs1DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA79&lpg...
tonno84 8y ago
too much free time
Aardwolf 8y ago
The only thing missing is an explanation why buffalo and dog are verbs. Non native speaker here, but afaik they are not.
- allochthon 8y ago
  See: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/buffalo https://www.dictionary.com/browse/buffalo (verb) https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dog https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dog (verb) "buffalo" is almost never used as a verb in everyday speech.
- petecox 8y ago
  The beauty of English is the process of 'verbing', where we can turn arbitrary nouns into verbs. Schooled in Commonwealth English, I wasn't familiar with buffalo being used as a verb but others in this thread have cited its meaning. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-verbing-1691035 https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-verbing-1691035
logfromblammo 8y ago
It's funny, because Buffalo buffalo are actually Bison bison bison. And when one decides to buffalo, the other is usually cowed.
alexmorenodev 8y ago
There's an entire subreddit dedicated to these things. Definitely worth a check. https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/ EDIT: Adding some good examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/3ogese/a_swindler_passes_by_a_bird_in_the_stairwell_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/3ogese/a_sw... https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/6so5w4/the_longest_word_avalanche_ever_at_1366_chars_261/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/6so5w4/the_...
- skunkworker 8y ago
  My favorites The President of the United States is going to debate the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Nobody's sure who's going to win. - "Trump may trump May, May may trump Trump." I've never done cocaine. - "My nose knows no snows." The guy who sketches crossbreed dogs is suitable for the role - "The labradoodle doodle dude'll do."
  - golem14 8y ago
    At least we all know what did the Doge do. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Court_Jester https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Court_Jester
philodough 8y ago
Humorous but does this move us closer to true AI?
alejohausner 8y ago
Frankly I'm not surprised. The only bison in the city of Buffalo are in the zoo. As we all know, bison are native to the great prairies, and would be happy only if they had freedom to roam. It must be very stressful for them to be cooped up in small spaces. So they are likely to take out their frustrations on their fellow zoo residents. Shame on Buffalo for condoning animal cruelty! They should close down the zoo.
mercora 8y ago
i know a german one which almost also works in english: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher" which should translate to: if behind flies flies are flying, flies are flying behind flies.
gcc_programmer 8y ago
This is useless. Also, as a non-native speakee, I don't get it.
pbhjpbhj 8y ago
How about "man eating lion eating man eating lion eating man ...". It should probably be "man-eating lion" for the lion that eats a man, but that spoils it.
jamesjyu 8y ago
A famous one in Chinese is The Lion-Eating Poet in a Stone Den, which has all characters sounding out as "shi": http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML This is somewhat cheating since not all the "shi" are in the same tone. In general, homophonic sentences are easier to write in Chinese because (1) it's a monophonic language, so the set of possible syllables is small and (2) Chinese grammar is flexible, and words can be liberally rearranged in a sentence and still read fine.
topynate 8y ago
https://oeis.org/A007477 https://oeis.org/A007477 “For n>=2, a(n) gives number of possible ways to parse an English sentence consisting of just n+1 copies of word "buffalo", with one particular "plausible" grammar.”
rdiddly 8y ago
Goose is one of those too, though the plural sort of ruins it. Still poetic though: Geese geese goose goose geese.
kashyapc 8y ago
Speaking of words ... here's one of my favorite German compound words: Verschlimmbesserung — "an intended improvement that makes things worse" I'm sure many of us here can relate to the word :D History of the word: "This construction doesn’t just present contrasting concepts. It also employs a playful use of German’s grammatical structures to tie them together. The word begins with two verbs – verschlimmern (“to worsen”) and verbessern (“to improve”). It then conflates their prefixes (ver-), and adds the suffix (-ung) to turn it into a noun. This process compresses an idea that only a wordy English translation can unpack: “an intended improvement that makes things worse." Source: https://theconversation.com/why-the-german-language-has-so-many-great-words-55554 https://theconversation.com/why-the-german-language-has-so-m...
- thedirt0115 8y ago
  I've heard that called "refucktoring" :)
  - kashyapc 8y ago
    Haha. A German colleague called it "inferiprovement". But I like the version you heard better.
- amyjess 8y ago
  Back in the '90s, David Pogue did a column in MacWorld where he introduced a bunch of terminology that he thought the tech industry needed. One of those, the only one I remember, was "corrupgrade", for exactly that.
jondubois 8y ago
The 'sentence' is not correct English because it's missing important punctuation marks. In fact, it's not a sentence. The definition of a sentence according to Google is: "a set of words that is complete in itself...". Without punctuation, it is incomplete; so it is not a sentence. Maybe it's a phrase? Adding punctuation makes it a sentence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo. ... Buffalo buffalo which Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo. ... Buffalo bisons which Buffalo bisons bully, bully Buffalo bisons.
dgivney 8y ago
A few years ago I created a syntactically correct, but semantically meaningless programming language based on this. Devoid of syntactic sugar, Buffalo Lang has only one token. http://bfalo.com http://bfalo.com
- broken_symlink 8y ago
  Did someone really ask for pointers?
  - dgivney 8y ago
    It's Esoteric Enterprise ready..
bearcobra 8y ago
One of the "Yes, Yes, No" segments on Reply All featured this and it was the only time I've come away from it more confused then when they started
dang 8y ago
The buffalo have been buffaloing for quite a while: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo%20...
- shawn 8y ago
  Dan, I have to tell you, Baby Shark is almost at 2 billion youtube views: https://youtu.be/XqZsoesa55w?t=14 https://youtu.be/XqZsoesa55w?t=14 There's also a remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IPtYTO0Vb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IPtYTO0Vb4 Two, in fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yYU4r1NgA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yYU4r1NgA Would you be interested in collaborating on a metal remix of Baby Shark? I think it could do well. I'm looking for a vocalist. I can't pay you yet, but you'd get exposure. EDIT: His teeth still bared in a grin, the Procurator glanced at the prisoner, then at the sun rising inexorably over the equestrian statues of the hippodrome far below to his left, and suddenly in a moment of agonising nausea it occurred to him that the simplest thing would be to dismiss this curious rascal from his balcony with no more than two words : ' Hang him. ' Dismiss the body-guard too, leave the arcade and go indoors, order the room to be darkened, fall on to his couch, send for cold water, call for his dog Banga in a pitiful voice and complain to the dog about his hemicrania. Suddenly the tempting thought of poison flashed through the Procurator's mind. He stared dully at the prisoner for a while, trying painfully to recall why this man with the bruised face was standing in front of him in the pitiless Jerusalem morning sunshine and what further useless questions he should put to him.
  - dang 8y ago
    You've now passed the limit of abusive behavior. If you post even one more of these, we are not going to unban you after 3 months.
dredmorbius 8y ago
Polish polish Polish polish polish, polish Polish polish Polish polish. Uniform in writing, though pronunciation shifts with casing.
mikedilger 8y ago
What I find most fascinating about this story is the "I'm certain I came up with this" notion, given the last several emails on that webpage. Memory is a terribly imprecise thing. We seem to fill in gaps with other memories that are shaped to fit the gap, or we logically reason it out without telling ourselves that we are using logic not memory. I personally have very detailed provably false memories.
randren1 8y ago
Probably a more of a statement about my sense of humor than anything else, but this is, by not even close, the funniest thing I have ever read on Hacker News!

181 points by mezod 8y ago

A great example of the beauty of the english language. German translation: Büffel-büffelnde Büffel büffeln Büffel. Not nearly as nice.

anonymfus 8y ago
Do you say beauty ironically here?
- Kye 8y ago
  Beautiful in the same way the cloud from an exploded star is beautiful. You wouldn't want to be stuck in its path.
lultimouomo 8y ago
I'd say that it's an example of a flaw in the english language: I don't know german but I think that the fact that not all words are exactly the same in the sentence will make it easier to parse. I'm not a native English speaker but I think I'm fairly proficient, and I find that I struggle parsing newspaper and website titles much more often than I would expect - I never struggle when speaking with people. I think this is due to the fact that short sentences omit articles and prepositions, which makes english way harder to parse since it doesn't have the redundancy in grammatical cues that other languages have.
- nicoburns 8y ago
  Words being the same makes it harder to parse, but easier to speak/write...
klmr 8y ago
Unfortunately I don’t think the German variant works due to the verb “büffeln” being intransitive. Apart from that, the presence of inflection in German renders the sentence less aesthetically pleasing but alleviates the exact ambiguity that dogs the English example so I’d see it as a plus.
imurray 8y ago
But you have such nice stories in German! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG62zay3kck https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG62zay3kck

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

It works for any noun that is also a verb and a place name. It might not make sense depending on what the noun and verb mean but it would be grammatically correct. If there's a town named Fish then you could substitute fish for buffalo.

klmr 8y ago
No town as far as I could find but several rivers called Fish. So yes, you can fish Fish fish.
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  I can see a Dr. Seuss style of book being written about "smelt" since it's a noun (a fish) a verb (extract metal from ore) and when spoken it's not very distinguishable from "smelled" and both "smelts" have are relatively strong smelling.
  - klmr 8y ago
    > and when spoken it's not very distinguishable from "smelled" In fact “smelt” is a completely valid alternative spelling of “smelled” (see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smell#Verb https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/smell#Verb).

jstanley 8y ago

A bit of a stretch, but there's also: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. (NewYork bison [that] NewYork bison bully [also] bully NewYork bison)

taneq 8y ago
This rides entirely on your local vernacular having a verb "buffalo" which means "to bully". I'm not sure how widespread that is but I sure never heard it before reading an explanation of this sentence.
- KineticLensman 8y ago
  Didn't make sense to this Brit; 'buffalo' definitely not in UK vernacular (at least not mine)
  - yesbabyyes 8y ago
    Well, the European bison never came to Britain, so you never had to suffer their buffaloing... ;)
- thomastjeffery 8y ago
  It's in mine. Maybe not common usage, but it's there. Source: From the western US.
  - dbcurtis 8y ago
    I grew up in Iowa/Minnesota, and buffalo is (was) used there. But is it a regionalism or anachronism? To me, “to buffalo” canotes a combination of verbal bullying and deception more than physical bullying.
- drfuchs 8y ago
  Merriam-Webster has the verb "to buffalo" as going back to 1891, with no notion of it being specific to any particular locale. The OED says it's "North American slang," while Google's dictionary calls it "informal". I've certainly heard it in conversation on the east and west coasts of the U.S. (albeit very occasionally). [Added:] For all sorts of American examples over the decades, see https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/buffaloed-by-the-verb-buffalo/ https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2018/04/23/buffaloed-by-the-...

0x0 8y ago

Missed opportunity for a great domain name - http://Buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.edu http://Buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.buffalo.edu

babuskov 8y ago

I prefer the "ship shipping ship shipping ship shipping ship" because there's a nice picture (possibly fake, but still) for it: https://imgur.com/gallery/pB0VXKq https://imgur.com/gallery/pB0VXKq

Kye 8y ago
It's real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Blue_Marlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Blue_Marlin
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
It's legit. Towards the bottom is another photo taken from a different angle and a video (I didn't watch it but the thumbnail looks promising) https://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-that-ships-other-ships/ https://twistedsifter.com/2012/04/blue-marlin-giant-ship-tha...

peetle 8y ago

Police is a much better word for this, IMHO. :) To spell it out, it's an adjective (e.g police car) verb (e.g. police the streets) and obviously a noun. Buffalo has never struck me as a very good verb...

peetle 8y ago
Obviously, police that police police police police, and those that police that group, police police police, police police police.
michaelt 8y ago
Here in the UK, I've never seen buffalo used as a verb, so the buffalo sentence has never seemed all that clever to me. I've always preferred the publican's complaint - "This sign is painted wrong, you missed the spaces between Dog and and, and and and Duck" - because it doesn't rely on unmarked compounds like police-police or Buffalo-buffalo no-one uses outside linguistic puzzles :)
- drostie 8y ago
  You could tack on several more if the fragment being corrected is "...conjunctions like butandandandor..." so that they are missing spaces between but and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and or, and commas would help immensely.
- SilasX 8y ago
  American here. Never heard anyone use “buffalo” as a verb either outside of this puzzle. “Police police” (as well as extensions) is reasonable enough: “Internal Affairs is like the police police.” “So are their supervisors like, the police police police?”
  - code_duck 8y ago
    It has a valid usage that’s somewhat archaic. I’ve run into the term in literature and old TV.
- 8y ago

hprotagonist 8y ago

always fun. i’m fond of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had... and https://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/stonelion.php https://www.yellowbridge.com/onlinelit/stonelion.php as well.

yesbabyyes 8y ago

Another favorite: If police police police police, who police police police? Police police police police police police. And: James, while John had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher. Also, of course Martin Gardner came up with a great one: Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?

zaroth 8y ago
Is the first one quite right? Who police police police? Police police police police. If police police the police police, who police the police who police police police? That would be police who police the police who police the police who police police. Who (n)? (n+1). If (n), who (n)? (n+1). [n > 2] P.S. 10 edits later... Wait, is that even right? Ow, my head P.P.S. Coding this chatbot is the next hot interview question.
- sirsar 8y ago
  (police police) [specifies what kind of police] (police) [people who do the policing] (police) [verb] (police police) [object that gets policed]. If (something)-police police (something), who police (something)-police? ((something)-police)-police police ((something)-police).
  - JadeNB 8y ago
    > who police (something)-police? This is the problem. The question is “who polices …?”, not “who police …?”, the rest of the sentence structure aside.
- jerf 8y ago
  Police police = Internal Affairs [1]. Who polices Internal Affairs? Internal Affairs-police police Internal Affairs. As I used a hyphen myself in that sentence, you could make a decent argument that English requires a bit more punctuation in the original sentence. It certainly allows it. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_(law_enforcement) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_affairs_(law_enforcem... , for those who don't watch as much police drama as my family does, or who live in a place that calls it something different.

appwiz 8y ago

And then there's the 2002 Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken paper by Doug Zongker (https://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/08/14/chicken-chicken-chicken-chicken-chicken/ https://news.cs.washington.edu/2013/08/14/chicken-chicken-ch...) Such an enlightening read!

eigenstuff 8y ago
A true classic. Every one should read.
jerf 8y ago
It may not be the original video, but a video presentation of it is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL_-1d9OSdk by the original author, contrary to the link's claims. It is probably the better way to approach the paper, due to the importance of timing in comedy and the fact that paper presents so much to you in a way that it can't control the timing, though unfortunately the video resolution is quite low. Plus the Q&A is pretty good. It is an amusing combination of video that is a trenchant commentary on the excessive similarity of the vast bulk of hard science papers, and a video that my four year old enjoyed back in the day. That puts your standard "family friendly" comedy movie to shame in terms of how much comedy ground it is capable of covering.

durkie 8y ago

There's also a Japanese version of this: 子子子子子子子子子子子子 Unfortunately I can only find a Spanish language Wikipedia article about it (https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_no_ko_koneko,_shishi_no_ko_kojishi https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neko_no_ko_koneko,_shishi_no...) but its roughly "kitten is the son of the cat, 'puppy' is the son of the lion" (we don't really have an English word for baby lion)

yesbabyyes 8y ago
(we don't really have an English word for baby lion) Cub?
- pdpi 8y ago
  Definitely better than puppy, but not quite specific to lions.
  - code_duck 8y ago
    It’s specific to lions, just not exclusive to lions.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      Ooh, pedantry, my kind of thread: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/specific https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/specific I think it fails on most if not all definitions of specific. "Lion cub" is specific, lion and cub are both specifiers. But "cub" is specific to juveniles of a range of species; so I'd say "not specific to lions". Interesting then to think which species do have specific English single-word names for juveniles. Owlets, foals, and joeys spring to mind ... French has louveteau for a wolf cub, perhaps it has a specific lion cub word too? I'd imagine Kiswahili to have a specific word, perhaps?
- codetrotter 8y ago
  Yes. I like how Google translate wrote it when translating the Spanish version; "the cat's son is a kitten; the son of the lion, cub".

codeulike 8y ago

See also the German compound word: Rhababerbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbarbärbel Which roughly translates to 'She's the Barbie of the bar where the beer of the beard barber for the barbarians of Rhubarb Barbara's bar is sold' Explanation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8 (in German, translation in video description)

steverb 8y ago
Lord in heaven, German compound words have always broken my brain.
- gpvos 8y ago
  Try Finnish.
Qwertystop 8y ago
It's nice that the English translation is nearly as selfsimilar.
SilasX 8y ago
In German, I think I came up with one, but am told it doesn’t work because dienen has to take the indirect object (turning some “die”s into “der”s). “Die, die die Die dient, dient die Die, die die Die dient.” The one who serves the Die serves the Die that the Die serves. (die- sounds like “dee”.)
gpvos 8y ago
If we're going off on a tangent: in Dutch, you can have a sentence ending in seven infinitives: "Ik zou hem wel eens hebben willen zien durven blijven staan kijken." (I would have liked to see him dare to stay stand watching.) (Although Dutch and German syntax are almost identical, this doesn't work in German.)
- kirkules 8y ago
  In English as well you can build sentences like "It's you I would love to love to love ... to love!", with arbitrarily many terminal infinitives.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

drewg123 8y ago

I just wish my alma mater's website could make the front page of HN for something other than this!

dwighttk 8y ago

Buffalo * 10

davrosthedalek 8y ago
No plus sign, so buffalo^10 :)
- dwighttk 8y ago
  yes

timstorer 8y ago

See also the palindrome "Bob bob bob bob bob". https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=shs1DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA79&lpg=PA79&dq=A+Plenum+of+Palindromes+for+Lewis+Carroll+A+Plenum+of+Palindromes+for+Lewis+Carroll&source=bl&ots=mYdUI6EyOJ&sig=ZceJl7Ilco-4TFiZ3n_avbzRWjE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwin35mGhcXeAhXMAsAKHUQ4AxMQ6AEwAnoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=A%20Plenum%20of%20Palindromes%20for%20Lewis%20Carroll%20A%20Plenum%20of%20Palindromes%20for%20Lewis%20Carroll&f=false https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=shs1DQAAQBAJ&pg=PA79&lpg...

tonno84 8y ago

too much free time

Aardwolf 8y ago

The only thing missing is an explanation why buffalo and dog are verbs. Non native speaker here, but afaik they are not.

allochthon 8y ago
See: https://www.dictionary.com/browse/buffalo https://www.dictionary.com/browse/buffalo (verb) https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dog https://www.dictionary.com/browse/dog (verb) "buffalo" is almost never used as a verb in everyday speech.
petecox 8y ago
The beauty of English is the process of 'verbing', where we can turn arbitrary nouns into verbs. Schooled in Commonwealth English, I wasn't familiar with buffalo being used as a verb but others in this thread have cited its meaning. https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-verbing-1691035 https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-verbing-1691035

logfromblammo 8y ago

It's funny, because Buffalo buffalo are actually Bison bison bison. And when one decides to buffalo, the other is usually cowed.

alexmorenodev 8y ago

There's an entire subreddit dedicated to these things. Definitely worth a check. https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/ EDIT: Adding some good examples: https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/3ogese/a_swindler_passes_by_a_bird_in_the_stairwell_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/3ogese/a_sw... https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/6so5w4/the_longest_word_avalanche_ever_at_1366_chars_261/ https://www.reddit.com/r/WordAvalanches/comments/6so5w4/the_...

skunkworker 8y ago
My favorites The President of the United States is going to debate the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Nobody's sure who's going to win. - "Trump may trump May, May may trump Trump." I've never done cocaine. - "My nose knows no snows." The guy who sketches crossbreed dogs is suitable for the role - "The labradoodle doodle dude'll do."
- golem14 8y ago
  At least we all know what did the Doge do. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Court_Jester https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/The_Court_Jester

philodough 8y ago

Humorous but does this move us closer to true AI?

alejohausner 8y ago

Frankly I'm not surprised. The only bison in the city of Buffalo are in the zoo. As we all know, bison are native to the great prairies, and would be happy only if they had freedom to roam. It must be very stressful for them to be cooped up in small spaces. So they are likely to take out their frustrations on their fellow zoo residents. Shame on Buffalo for condoning animal cruelty! They should close down the zoo.

mercora 8y ago

i know a german one which almost also works in english: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher" which should translate to: if behind flies flies are flying, flies are flying behind flies.

gcc_programmer 8y ago

This is useless. Also, as a non-native speakee, I don't get it.

pbhjpbhj 8y ago

How about "man eating lion eating man eating lion eating man ...". It should probably be "man-eating lion" for the lion that eats a man, but that spoils it.

jamesjyu 8y ago

A famous one in Chinese is The Lion-Eating Poet in a Stone Den, which has all characters sounding out as "shi": http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML http://www.fa-kuan.muc.de/SHISHI.RXML This is somewhat cheating since not all the "shi" are in the same tone. In general, homophonic sentences are easier to write in Chinese because (1) it's a monophonic language, so the set of possible syllables is small and (2) Chinese grammar is flexible, and words can be liberally rearranged in a sentence and still read fine.

topynate 8y ago

https://oeis.org/A007477 https://oeis.org/A007477 “For n>=2, a(n) gives number of possible ways to parse an English sentence consisting of just n+1 copies of word "buffalo", with one particular "plausible" grammar.”

rdiddly 8y ago

Goose is one of those too, though the plural sort of ruins it. Still poetic though: Geese geese goose goose geese.

kashyapc 8y ago

Speaking of words ... here's one of my favorite German compound words: Verschlimmbesserung — "an intended improvement that makes things worse" I'm sure many of us here can relate to the word :D History of the word: "This construction doesn’t just present contrasting concepts. It also employs a playful use of German’s grammatical structures to tie them together. The word begins with two verbs – verschlimmern (“to worsen”) and verbessern (“to improve”). It then conflates their prefixes (ver-), and adds the suffix (-ung) to turn it into a noun. This process compresses an idea that only a wordy English translation can unpack: “an intended improvement that makes things worse." Source: https://theconversation.com/why-the-german-language-has-so-many-great-words-55554 https://theconversation.com/why-the-german-language-has-so-m...

thedirt0115 8y ago
I've heard that called "refucktoring" :)
- kashyapc 8y ago
  Haha. A German colleague called it "inferiprovement". But I like the version you heard better.
amyjess 8y ago
Back in the '90s, David Pogue did a column in MacWorld where he introduced a bunch of terminology that he thought the tech industry needed. One of those, the only one I remember, was "corrupgrade", for exactly that.

jondubois 8y ago

The 'sentence' is not correct English because it's missing important punctuation marks. In fact, it's not a sentence. The definition of a sentence according to Google is: "a set of words that is complete in itself...". Without punctuation, it is incomplete; so it is not a sentence. Maybe it's a phrase? Adding punctuation makes it a sentence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo. ... Buffalo buffalo which Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo. ... Buffalo bisons which Buffalo bisons bully, bully Buffalo bisons.

dgivney 8y ago

A few years ago I created a syntactically correct, but semantically meaningless programming language based on this. Devoid of syntactic sugar, Buffalo Lang has only one token. http://bfalo.com http://bfalo.com

broken_symlink 8y ago
Did someone really ask for pointers?
- dgivney 8y ago
  It's Esoteric Enterprise ready..

bearcobra 8y ago

One of the "Yes, Yes, No" segments on Reply All featured this and it was the only time I've come away from it more confused then when they started

dang 8y ago

The buffalo have been buffaloing for quite a while: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0 https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Buffalo%20buffalo%20buffalo%20...

shawn 8y ago
Dan, I have to tell you, Baby Shark is almost at 2 billion youtube views: https://youtu.be/XqZsoesa55w?t=14 https://youtu.be/XqZsoesa55w?t=14 There's also a remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IPtYTO0Vb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IPtYTO0Vb4 Two, in fact: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yYU4r1NgA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4yYU4r1NgA Would you be interested in collaborating on a metal remix of Baby Shark? I think it could do well. I'm looking for a vocalist. I can't pay you yet, but you'd get exposure. EDIT: His teeth still bared in a grin, the Procurator glanced at the prisoner, then at the sun rising inexorably over the equestrian statues of the hippodrome far below to his left, and suddenly in a moment of agonising nausea it occurred to him that the simplest thing would be to dismiss this curious rascal from his balcony with no more than two words : ' Hang him. ' Dismiss the body-guard too, leave the arcade and go indoors, order the room to be darkened, fall on to his couch, send for cold water, call for his dog Banga in a pitiful voice and complain to the dog about his hemicrania. Suddenly the tempting thought of poison flashed through the Procurator's mind. He stared dully at the prisoner for a while, trying painfully to recall why this man with the bruised face was standing in front of him in the pitiless Jerusalem morning sunshine and what further useless questions he should put to him.
- dang 8y ago
  You've now passed the limit of abusive behavior. If you post even one more of these, we are not going to unban you after 3 months.

dredmorbius 8y ago

Polish polish Polish polish polish, polish Polish polish Polish polish. Uniform in writing, though pronunciation shifts with casing.

mikedilger 8y ago

What I find most fascinating about this story is the "I'm certain I came up with this" notion, given the last several emails on that webpage. Memory is a terribly imprecise thing. We seem to fill in gaps with other memories that are shaped to fit the gap, or we logically reason it out without telling ourselves that we are using logic not memory. I personally have very detailed provably false memories.

randren1 8y ago

Probably a more of a statement about my sense of humor than anything else, but this is, by not even close, the funniest thing I have ever read on Hacker News!