
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - bound008
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo
======
ikeboy
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences)

"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?" This sentence is much easier to read because the writer
placed commas between 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.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence)

"The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families".

------
tapiwa
Sentences like this exist in other languages too.

My mother tongue is Shona, and this would be a grammatically correct sentence.

Vana vana, vana vana vana, vana vana vana vana.

Translates to ...

Four children, have four children, who have four children each.

~~~
tauchunfall
In German (not the same words, but pronounced the same):

Bismarck biss Marc, bis Marc Bismarck biss.

Translates to...

Bismarck bit Marc until Marc bit Bismarck.

------
koolba
I feel like I've seen source code that reads like this.

~~~
dgivney
Not sure if this is what you're referring to but I created a programming
language after a late night discussion I had with my housemate who was
studying this a few years ago. The idea was to give the sentence a syntactic
meaning as well..

[http://bfalo.com/](http://bfalo.com/) and github project
[https://github.com/bfalo/buffalo-lang](https://github.com/bfalo/buffalo-lang)

It was also a good excuse to learn about tokenization, compilers &
interpreters.

~~~
koolba
Wow that's as close as it gets to the original article.

I was thinking of something more general like:

    
    
        foo = foo.foo("foo");
    

( _And yes the reassignment is intentional as the returned object isn 't
necessarily the same as the caller._)

------
sna1l
This makes me respect people who learn English as a second language a lot.

~~~
hudell
Do native speakers read this and naturally understand what is being said? I
understand the three meanings, but I wouldn't be able to point which instances
of the word have each meaning.

I still prefer "had had had had" though: "All the faith that he had had had
had no effect in the outcome of his life"

~~~
vorg
They wouldn't understand the sentence when _reading_ it, but may when
_listening_ to it spoken naturally, with correct tones, stresses and pauses,
if they're already familiar with all three uses of the word "buffalo". Not
many people know of the city Buffalo, or use the verb "to buffalo" so that
one's iffy. Most people speaking it would use the word "which" to introduce
the restrictive relative clause to make themselves better understood. To
ensure native English speakers not familiar with all three uses of "buffalo"
understand it when reading it, many people would write it "Buffalo-buffalo,
which Buffalo-buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo-buffalo."

~~~
vacri
Not even then. It's such a contrived example, playing with the fringes of the
language. It's certainly completely nonsensical without punctuation. No native
speaker would get it on the first pass, either read or naturally spoken.

It's also nonsensical in content: "things from a place, which have things done
by the same things from a place, themselves do things to the same things from
a place" \- it's tautological.

------
ChuckMcM
My favorite of all time was the sign in Doheny library at USC which read, "No
smoking food or drink in the library"

~~~
vorg
I suspect many English signs in Asian countries which use incorrect grammar,
including slogans on T-shirts, have had input by foreigners here being
mischievous. I particularly remember "No coming on the grass" as an English
translation for "Don't walk on the grass" on signs in a park in China 10 years
ago, and wondered if the translation had gone through some QA by a native
English speaker.

