

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo - roundsquare
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo

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gruseom
When a friend of mine was in grad school, he helped a classmate prepare for
her Test of English as a Foreign Language exam. They were going over some fine
point about past tenses when, attempting to explain a mistake she had made, he
said: _If you had had "had" here, you would have had to have had "have"
there._ She screamed.

~~~
dcminter
Reminiscent of the classic 'John, where Peter had had "had" had had "had had".
"Had had" had had the examiner's approval.'

~~~
teach
Interesting that Wikipedia only dates this from 1947; my 1964 copy of the 1935
book "Tricks and Amusements with coins, cards, string, paper and matches" by
R.M. Abraham includes this problem on page 3!

~~~
jeff18
Please correct the article! :)

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JadeNB
One can't buffalo buffalo without thinking of the two old standbys:

The horse raced past the barn fell.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence>)

John while James had had had had had had had had had more fun. (That one was
from an old puzzle book I had—had had?—as a kid. I find it much like the
Buffalo sentence, in that you puzzle over it for a while, are told the
resolution, and then say “Huh. OK, if you say so.”)

EDIT: While my mind's on random funny sentences, this one was an old favourite
of my mother's (who taught me all the grammar I know) from _Cheaper by the
Dozen_. It is the reaction of a child, whose bedroom is on the second floor,
on being presented with an unacceptable evening's reading: “What did you bring
that book you know I don't like to be read to out of up for?”

~~~
pvg
More hads can be had there -

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_ha...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_while_John_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_had_a_better_effect_on_the_teacher)

~~~
JadeNB
That's beautiful! It must be 20 years that I've been subconsciously bothered
by that puzzle, because I couldn't understand what “more fun” was supposed to
mean in that context. With ‘where’ in place of ‘while’ and “a better effect on
the teacher” in place of “more fun”, it sudddenly makes sense.

Also, the linked article links to “List of linguistic example sentences”
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sent...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences)),
which introduced me to a beautiful Mitch Hedberg quote:

> I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long.

and helped me remember a word that has been eluding me for some time:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sent...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_linguistic_example_sentences#Syllepsis).
Thanks!

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abecedarius
I'm always reminded of this by code like

    
    
        Buffalo buffalo = new Buffalo(BUFFALO);

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nex3
Interestingly, one can in fact create valid English sentences of arbitrary
length composed entirely of the word "Buffalo." By induction:

n = 1 is valid as the imperative of the verb. That is to say, "Buffalo" means
"You should harangue someone."

n = 2 is valid again as the imperative, this time with a subject: buffalo.
That is, "Buffalo buffalo" means "You should harangue some bison."

For n > 2, assume that the sentence for n - 1 is valid. This sentence will
contain at least one instance of the noun "buffalo" (meaning the animal),
either with or without the adjective "Buffalo" (meaning the city) prefixing
it. If there is no adjective, we can add one to get an n-length sentence. If
there is an adjective, we can replace "Buffalo buffalo" (meaning bison from
New York) with "buffalo buffalo buffalo" (meaning bison that are harangued by
other bison), again yielding an n-length sentence. Thus, by induction, a
buffalo sentence can be constructed for any n.

~~~
sp332
For n=2, you have a verb and an object, but no subject.

~~~
sp332
What's with the downvote? I understand the implied subject, but this part:

 _n = 2 is valid again as the imperative, this time with a subject: buffalo.
That is, "Buffalo buffalo" means "You should harangue some bison."_

is wrong. The two "buffalo" are the verb and the object. Neither of them is a
subject.

~~~
nex3
You're right. I got my terminology mixed up.

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bdr
The AI dream: code code codes codes code.

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ghshephard
From the Wikipedia article, the following was the only one that let me make
sense of this:

""Alley cats [whom] Junkyard dogs intimidate [also happen to] intimidate Sewer
rats.""

(Where the place "Buffalo is replaced by "Alley", "Junkyard", "Sewer" - and
the act, to buffalo, is replaced with "intimidate", while the animals
"buffalo" is replaced with cats, dogs, and rats.

I'll admit it took me a few minutes to get the implicit "whom" and "also
happen to".

~~~
skorgu
The way I remember it myself is by building it up in my head first:

cows intimidate cows

Scranton cows intimidate cows.

cows Scranton cows intimidate intimidate cows

Scranton cows Scranton cows intimidate intimidate cows

Scranton cows Scranton cows intimidate intimidate Scranton cows.

Once I've got the structure in my head with pauses to break it up for myself:
Buffalo buffalo _pause_ Buffalo buffalo buffalo _pause_ buffalo Buffalo
buffalo it's pretty easy to grok (and spit out on cue to the disbelief of
others).

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gjm11
Similar but (1) better because it doesn't use coincidental multiple meanings,
(2) better because it doesn't use anything so obscure as buffalo=harass, and
(3) worse because it needs two different words:

oysters oysters oysters split split split

"oysters split": oysters come apart into two pieces.

"oysters oysters split split": oysters whom oysters split, split: those
oysters whom other oysters take apart into two pieces, come apart into two
pieces.

"oysters oysters oysters split split split": oysters whom (oysters whom
oysters split, split) split: those oysters whom (those oysters whom other
oysters take apart into two pieces, in turn take apart into two pieces) come
apart into two pieces.

Much as with the buffalo sentence, this works for arbitrary values of 3.

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dryicerx
I bet Natural Language Processing Engines would crap them selves if they try
to parse this correctly.

 _This is why we can't have nice things_

~~~
wheels
That's ok. Biological language processing engines crap themselves if they try
to parse this correctly.

~~~
jimbokun
The real problem is that an artificial language processing engine _will_ find
a parse for it.

One actual example I remember is a parse of "New fans run." About the
operation of recently acquired fans, right?

Well, the lexicon in our system found an instance of "New" as a proper noun (a
band or something), the use of "fans" as a transitive verb, and one of the
definition of "runs" as a noun (think baseball, for just one example). So you
had this proper noun New fanning this abstract usage of runs as the parse that
the system selected.

This more than anything demonstrated to me the necessity of statistical
techniques in NLP (now taken as a given, but a fairly recent development
relative to the history of NLP research).

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loumf
I like "The Los Angelos Angels", which means "The The Angels Angels".

~~~
Perceval
Kind of like "Montgomery of the El Alamein," which means Montgomery of the the
the Amein.

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eelco
Ah, fun with grammar ;) Dutch comedian Kees Torn came up with a (Dutch)
sentence, repeating one word 16 times in a row: "Als er bij het drop (waar
bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen) Bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen,
bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen."
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHnpjsR5q6g>)

~~~
loumf
No coke, pepsi

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philwelch
Wouldn't the sentence "I want to put two hyphens 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,
and after Chips?

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loup-vaillant
Which is why overloading and type inference aren't very good friends.

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compay
One in German:

Wenn fliegen hinter fliegen fliegen, fliegen fliegen fliegen hinter nach.

It means something like, "when flies fly behind flies, then flies fly after
flies."

~~~
jimbokun
Shouldn't there be time and arrows in there somewhere?

~~~
LogicHoleFlaw
Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.

~~~
BearOfNH
Time flies like an arrow; space flies like a bow.

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code_devil
I remember one from grade 5 which is kind of similar ... "I saw a saw to saw a
saw "

(The Buffalo based is definitely not easy to comprehend in the first go)

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cadr
Make sure to click the 'Listen to this article' link at the bottom - many
Wikipedia articles are _much_ funnier if someone is reading them to you.

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donaq
I am also reminded of Marklar from South Park.

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biggitybones
Everytime I come across this I have to go to the wikipedia page to check the
grammar.

I find these types of sentences incredibly creative (and confusing).

A similar thing, inspired by buffalo and illustrated:
<http://myapokalips.com/show/15#comic>

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seanlinmt
we have something similar in the hokkien dialect.. which goes .. kong kong
kong kong kong kong kong kong kong kong

which consists of ... kong kong = grandpa kong = says kong = can kong = hit
kong = dizy

but you have to get the intonation right .. lol

~~~
dkimball
Also
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_D...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den)
.

It's a private theory of mine that the Spring and Autumn and Warring States
periods were so lively because "this is an excellent shoulder of pork" sounded
exactly like "I will attack your city at dawn"... :)

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keefe
my sentence parser is officially buffalo'd

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lukev
The buffalo sentence may be grammatically valid, but it's not "valid" by any
real test of human understanding.

Chomsky-esque generative grammar can't tell the whole story about human
language.

~~~
billybob
I think that's the point, actually. The fact that a sentence can be
grammatically correct but not logically correct, or be both, but still not
"make sense," is interesting in itself. It shows how difficult it is to
determine whether a sentence is "valid" for speakers of that language.

(Chomsky's classic example of "grammatical but not logical" was "Colorless
green ideas sleep furiously.")

~~~
billybob
Think of it like this: Chomsky was testing the brain's language parser by
handing it weird things and seeing how it reacts. Like you might do with a new
programming language: what happens if I try to add strings, or divide them? Is
zero true? Is the string "nil" true? Is == different from ===? Can I pass a
function into a function?

The brain's language center is undocumented, so we try throwing potential
sentences at it and see what works or doesn't, then try to reverse engineer
what it's doing. The buffalo sentence conforms to the rules we know about word
order, and can be logically explained, but somehow it fails. Finding out why
is part of the reverse engineering process.

~~~
lukev
Yes... the interesting question is whether it fails because of a "rule" we're
not aware of, or because it's simply too complex. The human mind is recursive,
but is it simply that it only have a "stack depth" of 3 or 4 and can't parse
more deeply than that?

~~~
foldr
>The human mind is recursive, but is it simply that it only have a "stack
depth" of 3 or 4 and can't parse more deeply than that?

That was Chomsky and Miller's theory (although they weren't dealing with that
particular example).

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pmiller2
I saw a video a while back about Cyc where Lenat talks about how they make
sure their AI is still acting somewhat sane by feeding it sentences like this
one, or, "Can a can can-can?"

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twelvethirteen
the article touches on the fact that a sentence of any length could be
constructed entirely out of buffalo, but it doesn't really explain how. here's
how to make it arbitrarily long:

start with "Buffalo[place] buffalo[noun] buffalo[verb] buffalo[noun]"

after any "buffalo[noun]", insert "Buffalo[place] buffalo[noun] buffalo[verb]"
to change the meaning to 'bison that Buffalo bison intimidate'

youve just created a new grammatical sentence of length n+3. iterate and enjoy

~~~
calcnerd256
pumping lemma?

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barnaby
Well, it's good to know Buffalo NY has _something_ going for it.

~~~
jrockway
That they have a bunch of overgrown cows that harass each other?

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andrewvc
Malkovich, malkovich malkovich malkovich. Malkovich?

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ur3CQE8xB3c>

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ANH
In college, my wife was told this sentence by a metaphysics professor. He also
used to have acid flashbacks during class.

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quux
I like:

Oysters oysters eat eat oysters.

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gprisament
Malkavich Malkavich, Malkavich Malkavich Malkavich

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dmn
Mind = Blown.

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tcarnell
Hey, it's available:

buffalobuffalobuffalobuffalobuffalobuffalobuffalobuff.com

:-)

...but I think I prefer BadgerBadgerBadger.com

