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Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
- benmercerdev 3y agoWhile living in Taiwan, I came up with something like this in the Chinese language: 這麼多多多多少錢？ A 多多 is a small yogurt drink. This roughly translates to “So many 多多s cost how much money?
- cvccvroomvroom 3y agoColorless green ideas sleep furiously.
- rixtox 3y agoAnother one in Chinese: 人要是行，干一行行一行，一行行行行行，行行行干哪行都行，要是不行，干一行不行一行，一行不行行行不行，行行不行，干哪行都不行
- Rant423 3y agoMy constant source of werid-but-great wikipedia articles: https://www.instagram.com/depthsofwikipedia/ https://www.instagram.com/depthsofwikipedia/ https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki https://twitter.com/depthsofwiki
- Pelican3301 3y agoYou can also do it with the word Fuck: "Fuck it, the fucking fucker’s fucking fucked." ~as recounted by author Anthony Burgess https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/anthony-burgess-on-low-life-language/ https://www.anthonyburgess.org/blog-posts/anthony-burgess-on...
- s3p 3y agoAh, love this one. I remember the first time I heard of it several years ago. I actually thought about it earlier today, when a few of my uni classmates mentioned to the prof that they were from Buffalo. Didn't speak up and say the monstrous sentence, but maybe I should have. lol
- timetraveller26 3y agoBut maybe only the teacher and another other person would understand it and the others would have thought you were having a seizure!
- usrusr 3y agoHeard about it for the first time today and already feeling a strange satisfaction: "well if that's what they do, so much that they've become namesake to a verb, then that's very well what they deserve!" Justice at last! Closest thing I know in German is unexpected in a very different way: "Mähen Äbte? Äbte mähen nie, Äbte beten“ is perfectly clear in the written, but when spoken the words are drawn together more than usual and without context that you might be talking about abbots or mowing, most people will insist that the utterance can't possibly be German at all.
- noman-land 3y agoThe translation that let me finally understand this sentence was: "Buffalo bison that other Buffalo bison bully also bully Buffalo bison." And from my other comment: "Mighty bells hearty maidens ring vibrate nearby chairs."
- bandyaboot 3y agoThe Wikipedia article also substitutes Buffalonian for Buffalo for an extra bit of clarity.
- graypegg 3y agoI still find the first noun phrase and relative clause (first 5 buffalo words, Buffalonian bison that Buffalonian bison bully) to be just unparsable. If you switch up the nouns it’s slightly easier to grok: Vancouver birds Toronto bison bully But the missing “that” connector in between the two just doesn’t parse in my brain no matter how many times as I read it.
- noman-land 3y agoHow about: "Mighty bells hearty maidens ring vibrate nearby chairs." You can move it slightly closer to see how it starts to line up. "Mighty bells mighty bells ring ring mighty bells." Closer... "Mighty bells mighty bells bell bell mighty bells."
- graypegg 3y agoWow, that is VERY effective reading those outloud one after the other! I think that is the most effective way of understanding the buffalo phrase “sound” that I’ve seen.
- noman-land 3y agoI thought to post it but you can take it a level further. "Belly bells belly bells bell bell belly bells." Just realized another one. "Dear deer dear deer dere dere dear deer."
- orionsbelt 3y agoThanks; that finally made it click for me!
- dredmorbius 3y agoShould that be / is that clear as: "Mighty bells mighty belles bell bell mighty bells." ("maiden" -> "belle")
- noman-land 3y ago
- epiccoleman 3y agoMy favorite "word avalanche" is this one: "James had had had had John had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher" With added commas, to aid parsing: "James had had had had, John had had had - had had had had a better effect on the teacher." The context being a hypothetical sentence in which either "had" or "had had" were valid constructions. "Had had" was the formulation which the teacher liked best. It really boggles the brain to see that many repetitions, but I find it easier to parse/explain than the Buffalo one.
- rawling 3y agoStart it off like > John, whereas James had had "had", had had "had "had"... and you can get them all together...
- epiccoleman 3y agoYou're right - mine was from memory, but this is closer to the original formulation - it's supposed to have been "James while John had had had had ... "
- CaptainNegative 3y agoJames, while John had had "had had" had had "had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had". "had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had had" had had a worse effect on John's computer program because the string buffer wasn't large enough. In the context of two users putting inputs into a C program that doesn't sanitize user input.
- mst 3y agoTwo strings walk into a bar and sit down. The bartender says, “So what’ll it be?” The first string says, “I think I’ll have a beer quag fulk boorg jdk^CjfdLk jk3s d#f67howe%^U r89nvy~~owmc63^Dz x.xvcu” “Please excuse my friend,” the second string says, “He isn’t null-terminated.”
- blurbleblurble 3y agoBuffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo too
- blurbleblurble 3y ago--> <bison from Buffalo that bison from Buffalo bully> bully <bison from Buffalo that bison from Buffalo bully>
- Delfino 3y agoI think the simplest repeating word sentence is using "police". It isn't as impressive since it only employs two meanings rather than three but is much easier to grasp. Who polices police? Police police. Police police police police. But then who polices police police? Police police police. Police police police police police police. Repeat ad infinitum. n-Police police (n-1)-police
- nvy 3y agoSadly, police demonstrably do not police police.
- wryoak 3y agoBecause that’s the jurisdiction of the police police. Did you not read the post to which you responded?
- try_the_bass 3y agoNo, no. Police don't police police, police police police police.
- emptybits 3y agoWhen police police police, we sometimes get oversight oversight.
- kuschku 3y agoWenn Fliegen hinter Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach.
- mistyvales 3y agoSeems like this shows up four times a year on here. The chinese one is cool too https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_...
- dang 3y agoRelated: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36525549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36525549 - June 2023 (7 comments) Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460256 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36460256 - June 2023 (4 comments) Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36036855 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36036855 - May 2023 (5 comments) Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288372 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22288372 - Feb 2020 (19 comments) A History of the Sentence "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo." (1999-2015) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18405860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18405860 - Nov 2018 (127 comments) Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18391960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18391960 - Nov 2018 (6 comments) Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654975 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11654975 - May 2016 (17 comments) Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6785788 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6785788 - Nov 2013 (4 comments) A History of the Sentence "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893813 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4893813 - Dec 2012 (1 comment) Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340300 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3340300 - Dec 2011 (1 comment) A History of the Sentence "Buffalo buffalo..." - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1100073 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1100073 - Feb 2010 (1 comment) Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097258 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097258 - Feb 2010 (69 comments)
- westmeal 3y agoDamn daniel
- p1mrx 3y agoSaturday Saturday Saturday Saturday Saturday Saturday Saturday Saturday Saturday night's alright.
- arun-mani-j 3y agoNo sentence ends in because because because is a conjunction. But it is easy to understand once you add comma.
- pxeger1 3y agoIn my opinion, deliberately omitting quotation marks is cheating
- Al-Khwarizmi 3y agoThis particular example is grammatically valid without them, though. I find the "had had had had..." example above more "cheaty" because that one does need some punctuation which is omitted.
- checkyoursudo 3y agoPretty sure my kids disagree. "Why did you do that?" "Just because." (Okay, maybe it is not a complete sentence, so your point holds.)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Izkata 3y agoJapanese one: 庭(niwa) に(ni) は(wa) 二羽(niwa) 鶏(niwatori) がいる(ga iru) "There are two chickens in the garden"
- glandium 3y agoIt's worth noting that pitch accent matters: LHHLHLLHHHHLH (L: low, H: high, for each mora). It becomes even more important if you remove one set of "niwa", because then you can have two different meanings: "there are two birds in the garden" (depending on the pitch accent, the order of the words can be different) "there is a chicken in the garden"
- geluso 3y agoI collect and maintain a list of examples like this. Usually stuff I see somewhere else or random ones that pop into my head. My favorite simple one: "Unlike whiskey, you can't water water down." My favorite long one: "I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign" https://5tephen.com/loopdeloops/ https://5tephen.com/loopdeloops/
- lloeki 3y agoIt's longer than that: "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?" - Martin Gardner
- istjohn 3y agoThe passage "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?" would sprawl across the page if newlines were placed between the and words, and words and Fish, and Fish and and, and and and between, and between and Fish, and Fish and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And 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.
- _moof 3y agoHere's one from comedian Brian Regan: reservation reservation reservation (second thoughts about dinner plans in a Native American community).
- martinclayton 3y agoI have two ... things ... I don't know if this type of phrase has a technical name. my minute newt my migrating grating The first one is minute as in very small. The second one the grating referred to a noun (as in diffraction grating), not a verb.
- riwsky 3y agoBu bu bu bu bu bu bu Bennie and the Jets
- mablopoule 3y agoWill Will Smith smith ? Will Smith will smith.
- lloeki 3y agoWill, will Will will Will Will's will? – Will
- dredmorbius 3y agoFast Polish police buffalo Buffalo polish fast police Fast buffalo police polish. (Quick police officers from Poland bully Buffalonian polish-compound dieting overseers immobilized bison police officers shine.) Contrived, but (I believe) original.
- dredmorbius 3y agoAnd another I came up with a while back: The lowing-cow Low Cali local yokel Low-Cal Calzone Locale. <https://old.reddit.com/r/thebutton/comments/318w4j/april_2nd_at_the_reddit_offices_for_whoever_came/cpzprtm/?context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/thebutton/comments/318w4j/april_2nd...>
- lloeki 3y agoThere's a list on this page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sen... The non-english examples section is fun too! The Czech ambiguity one with 5 words giving 7+ sentence meanings (raising to 58 possible meanings when allowing same syllables but a single word merge) is mind boggling. I also quite like this punctuation-based one: Dear John: I want a man who knows what love is all about. You are generous, kind, thoughtful. People who are not like you admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me for other men. I yearn for you. I have no feelings whatsoever when we’re apart. I can be forever happy–will you let me be yours? Jane vs Dear John, I want a man who knows what love is. All about you are generous, kind, thoughtful people, who are not like you. Admit to being useless and inferior. You have ruined me. For other men, I yearn. For you, I have no feelings whatsoever. When we’re apart, I can be forever happy. Will you let me be? Yours, Jane
- avip 3y agoNon-English list missing the canonical Hebrew example שלמה שלמה שלמה שלמה שלמה (or maybe it doesn't count because it's based on missing punctuation)
- HenryBemis 3y agoAnd an ancient Greek example - it's all about the 'gap', where you breath/put the comma. ἥξεις ἀφήξεις, οὐκ ἐν πολέμῳ θνήξεις You go you will return, not die in the war. ἥξεις ἀφήξεις οὐκ, ἐν πολέμῳ θνήξεις You go you will return not, die in the war.
- istjohn 3y agoDEAR JOHN I WANT A MAN WHO KNOWS WHAT LOVE IS ALL ABOUT YOU ARE GENEROUS KIND THOUGHTFUL PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT LIKE YOU ADMIT TO BEING USELESS AND INFERIOR YOU HAVE RUINED ME FOR OTHER MEN I YEARN FOR YOU I HAVE NO FEELINGS WHATSOEVER WHEN WERE APART I CAN BE FOREVER HAPPY WILL YOU LET ME BE YOURS JANE
- The_Colonel 3y agoThese examples provide a nice illustration how human language evolution optimizes for most common use cases and basically ignores the worst case scenarios. Quite a bit different from formal languages where even rare worst cases get a lot of attention (or rather they are designed in a way to avoid worst case scenarios at the cost of making the typical scenarios less efficient).
- sam_goody 3y agoA cardinal cardinal Cardinal's cardinal cardinal cardinal sensed the cardinality of the Cardinals. (An important red priest's important red bird could tell players how many players were on the baseball team.)
- 131hn 3y agoA french classic (but less impressive) Si mon tonton tond ton tonton, ton tonton sera tondu. (If my uncle shave your uncle, your uncle will be shaved)
- 131hn 3y agoAnd for deutsch/german Nach dem stutzen des Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbarts geht der Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbier meist mit den Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbaren in die Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbar zu Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbierbarbärbel um sie mit zur Rhabarberbarbarabar zu nehmen um mit etwas Rhabarberbarbarabarbarbarenbartbarbierbier von Rhabarberbarbaras herrlichem Rhabarberkuchen zu essen. https://www.oezeps.at/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Rabarberbarara.pdf https://www.oezeps.at/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Rabarberbar...
- penguin_booze 3y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3_tRPRt9x8
- bifftastic 3y agoAm I the only one who just doesn't find this very interesting? I mean it's just a coincidence that "buffalo" is a verb in American English and also a place name, as well as an animal. I just don't think this leads anywhere interesting.
- m4tthumphrey 3y agoSo if someone came up to you in at a party or any other social environment and said "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" and then walked off, your interest wouldn't be piqued?
- Flozzin 3y agoNo, not really. People do all sorts of crap for all sorts of reasons. Some people are literally insane. Some people do things at your expense. Some people just like to amuse only themselves. And then throw drugs and alcohol in the mix, there isn't much reason to believe that people are always rational actors which have to be taken seriously.
- technothrasher 3y agoFor somebody with a Cognitive Science degree like myself, the interesting place it leads is that it is a grammatically correct sentence which almost every native speaker who is unfamiliar with will claim is not. Why? If we can reason out that it is grammatically correct, but our built in grammar parser will evaluate it as incorrect, what is it we don't understand about the way our brain processes linguistic information?
- wanderingstan 3y agoIt’s interesting for several reasons at least: - It shows “corner cases” in our own human languages where meaning is not clear even when a sentence is grammatically correct. (This possibility is perhaps more obvious to tech people, but a surprise to many) - It shows how understanding a sentence is so different from reading. When, with some aid, one finally can read the buffalo sentence and understand it, it’s amazing to realize how it “clicks”. As technothrasher said, this is interesting to those understanding how the brain works. - As others noted, reveals how much of human language is about defaults and convention, and NOT about parsing based in grammar. This was something that had to be learned; early thinkers sometimes assumed that the brain was just a parser. - For hackers, it’s interesting to find ways to “break” a human language while playing by the rules (grammar).
- nilslindemann 3y agoBuffalo bison, which Buffalo bison bully, also bully Buffalo bison. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo#Exclusion_of_that/which https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_b...
- Angostura 3y agoFrom my childhood - works, verbally not when written. 1-1 was a race horse, 2-2 was one too. 1-1 won one race - and 2-2 won one too.
- janpot 3y agoMy favorite Dutch one seems to work in English as well: before was was was, was was is
- Loic 3y agoIn French: Si ton tonton tond ton tonton, ton tonton tondu sera. The grammatically correct sentence would swap the two last words, but in French you can take a bit of liberty with the order of the words.
- wrboyce 3y agoMy favourite one of these is “That that is is that that is not is not is that it it is”, which can take on a few meanings depending on how you distribute the punctuation. My favourite punctuated form is “That that is, is. That that is not, is not. Is that it? It is.”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_that_is_is_that_that_is_not_is_not_is_that_it_it_is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_that_is_is_that_that_is_n...
- noyesno 3y agoCouple of funny ones in Finnish: "Kuusi palaa" has at least six different meanings: 1) your moon is burning, 2) pruce tree is burning, 3) number six is burning, 4) a part of something is burning, 5) pruce tree returns, and 6) your moon returns. "Kokoa kokoon koko kokko!" "Koko kokko kokoonko?" "Koko kokko kokoon!" Which translates to a conversation between two parties on the building of a bonfire.
- zoky 3y agoWait, so you’re saying Finns have no way to distinguish between “your moon is burning” and “pruce tree returns”??? No wonder Nokia failed.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nickjj 3y agoWhenever I see this reference it reminds me of: https://i.chzbgr.com/full/8488834304/h1BE216D8/trolling-russian-cursive https://i.chzbgr.com/full/8488834304/h1BE216D8/trolling-russ... I don't speak or write Russian but someone once told me about Russian cursive and yep that looks fun to think about.
- flobosg 3y agoOne in Spanish: «¿Cómo como? Como como, como.»
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lsedgwick 3y ago> Thomas Tymoczko has pointed out that there is nothing special about eight "buffalos";[2] any sentence consisting solely of the word "buffalo" repeated any number of times is grammatically correct. My favorite part of this. Repeated 10 times, for instance, could mean "NY bison NY bison bully bully bison NY bison bully." (The New York bison who are bullied by other NY bison, well they themselves bully some bison whom other NY bison bully.) Any number of times unfurls out of, like, kind of a context-free grammar replacement scheme from a base case: "bully bison" -> base case "* bison *" -> "* bison bison bully *" "* bison *" -> "* NY bison *"
- Tattva07 3y agoReduced relative clauses should only be used when they do not compromise the clarity the sentence, which is not the case here. You can add a "that" or "which" or settle for only 5 "buffalo"
- omnibrain 3y agoIn 4th grade, during religious study we had to work in small groups and write a dialogue for a scene from the bible. My group had the scene when the Arche rans aground as the water sinks. I wrote the sentence “Heißt das, daß das Schiff sinkt?”, meaning “does that mean the ship is sinking?”. Havin 3 “das(ß)” in a row went right over the head of my group mates. That was, apart from horrible (loud) reading speeds, one of the first times I really noticed differences in language expression between my classmates. We were all native speakers, mind you.
- mjklin 3y agoTwo from The Onion: New Envelope Pushes Envelope Envelope Supreme Court Rules Supreme Court Rules
- lproven 3y agoIt is rarely noted that this sentence only works in American English, where "Buffalo" (with a capital B) is also a place, and "buffalo" (with a minuscule b) is a verb. Neither of these is true in standard British English or any other regional form, AFAIK.
- nullindividual 3y agoBuffalo is a place in British English, Japanese, Thai, Indian, etc.
- lproven 3y agoI think you're missing the point. People from other countries might well not know it's a place. 2 of these are places, 2 are not. Without Googling, which are which? Taumata whakatangi hangakoauau o tamatea turi pukakapiki maunga horo nuku pokai whenua kitanatahu. Traa dy Liooar. Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Ayuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Piman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. Zaglabor astragard Hootrimansion Bambriar.