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Twozzok

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

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No, this is not spam. This is a thread about the greatest sentence in the English language.

 

 

Now let me show you how it's a valid sentence.

 

Buffalo has 3 meanings in this case:

 

  • Buffalo, as in the city (town?) Buffalo in America.
     
  • buffalo, as in the verb.
     

     
    5. to puzzle or baffle; confuse; mystify: He was buffaloed by the problem.
    6. to impress or intimidate by a display of power, importance, etc.: The older boys buffaloed him.
     
    For this we can use either of these meanings.
     
  • and Buffalo as in the animal.

 

Say we replace the city with 'London', The verb with 'intimidate' and the animal with 'men'. This is what we'd get:

 

[*]London men London men intimidate, intimidate London men.

 

If it still doesn't make sense, this might help.

 

[*]London men (that) London men intimidate, intimidate London men.

 

Got any other cool things like this that seem to not make sense but do. I'll give a couple more examples if no-one posts them before me.

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I understand the London one, but the buffalo sentence is still beyond my low levels of comprehension. :hmm:

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lawl, that's crazy

 

I have one that's completely irrelevant for you because you can't read portuguese:

 

"Socorram-me, subi no onibus em Marrocos."

 

If you read it backwards letter by letter ignoring the spaces it still reads the exact same way as if you read it normally. Props to the guy who had the insane trouble to find this out.

It means "Help me, i got on the bus in Morocco." by the way.

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lawl, that's crazy

 

I have one that's completely irrelevant for you because you can't read portuguese:

 

"Socorram-me, subi no onibus em Marrocos."

 

If you read it backwards letter by letter ignoring the spaces it still reads the exact same way as if you read it normally. Props to the guy who had the insane trouble to find this out.

It means "Help me, i got on the bus in Morocco." by the way.

 

That's a palindrome :)

 

Other such examples include

 

'Rise to vote siR'

 

and

 

' Step on no petS'

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Madam I'm Adam, apparently the first ever spoken palindrome, said by Adam upon meeting Eve. :heh:

 

Also putting on a Scottish dialect you can make the fun sentence "Can I barry, your barry, Barry?", as in "Can I borrow your barrow, Barry?" Oh language is fun.

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I've heard that before.

 

Another one is a sentence with five "and"s in a row. I can't quite remember it but it has something to do with a pub sign.

 

'Rise to vote siR'

 

Simpsons.

 

EDIT: found it.

 

The landlord of a pub called The Pig And Whistle asked a signwriter to make a new sign. When he saw it he thought that the words were too close together so he said to the signwriter "I want more space between Pig and And and And and Whistle".

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mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine

 

nemo4.jpg

 

(this is spam)

 

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The landlord of a pub called The Pig And Whistle asked a signwriter to make a new sign. When he saw it he thought that the words were too close together so he said to the signwriter "I want more space between Pig and And and And and Whistle".

 

This is the kind of thing I'm looking for :D

 

An extended version of that is:

 

"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?"

 

A couple off wikipedia:

 

"Lady Cavendish stood up and gathered her thoughts. ‘Indeed, the uses of had had and that that have to be strictly controlled; they can interrupt the imaginotransference quite dramatically, causing readers to go back over the sentence in confusion, something we try to avoid.’

 

‘Go on.’

 

‘It’s mostly an unlicensed-usage problem. At the last count David Copperfield alone had had had had sixty-three times, all but ten unapproved. Pilgrim’s Progress may also be a problem due to its had had/that that ratio.’

 

‘So what’s the problem in Progress?’

 

‘That that had that that ten times but had had had had only thrice. Increased had had usage had had to be overlooked, but not if the number exceeds that that that usage.’

 

‘Hmm,’ said the Bellman, ‘I thought had had had had TGC’s approval for use in Dickens? What’s the problem?’

 

‘Take the first had had and that that in the book by way of example,’ explained Lady Cavendish. ‘You would have thought that that first had had had had good occasion to be seen as had, had you not? Had had had approval but had had had not; equally it is true to say that that that that had had approval but that that other that that had not.’

 

‘So the problem with that other that that was that . . . ?’

 

‘That that other-other that that had had approval.’

 

‘Okay,’ said the Bellman, whose head was in danger of falling apart like a chocolate orange, ‘let me get this straight: David Copperfield, unlike Pilgrim’s Progress, had had had, had had had had. Had had had had TGC’s approval?’"

 

 

 

 

 

and

 

 

"Esau Wood sawed wood. Esau Wood would saw wood. All the wood Esau Wood saw, Esau Wood would saw. In other words, all the wood Esau saw to saw, Esau sought to saw. Oh, the wood Wood would saw! And, oh the wood-saw with which Wood would saw wood! But one day, Wood's wood-saw would saw no wood, and thus the wood Wood sawed was not the wood Wood would saw if Wood's wood-saw would saw wood. Now, Wood would saw wood with a wood-saw that would saw wood, so Esau sought a saw that would saw wood. One day, Esau saw a saw saw wood as no other wood-saw Wood saw would saw wood. In fact, of all the wood-saws Wood ever saw saw wood, Wood never saw a wood-saw that would saw wood as the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood would saw wood, and I never saw a wood-saw that would saw as the wood-saw Wood saw would saw until I saw Esau Wood saw wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood. Now Wood saws wood with the wood-saw Wood saw saw wood."

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"Does the statement, "We've always done it that way" ring any bells?

 

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used?

 

Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

 

Why did the English build them like that?

 

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

 

Why did "they" use that gauge then?

 

 

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

 

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

 

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

 

So who built those old rutted roads?

 

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. The roads have been used ever since.

 

And the ruts in the roads?

 

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for

Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing..

 

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.

 

So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.

 

Now the twist to the story

 

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs.

 

The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah . The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

 

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two

thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass.

 

... and you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!"

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I like the word fo'c's'le, short for forecastle. (both pronounced fox-ull)

 

The word "set" has 36 english definitions.

 

"Go." is the shortest sentence in the English language.

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"Go." is the shortest sentence in the English language.

 

Along with 'No.', 'Me?' and probably a few other two letter words that can be used to answer questions.

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thsi has to be the most entertaining thread for a very long time! full marks.

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If you like palindromes then you should listen to Bob by Weird Al Yankovic

 

Linkage

 

Some of my favourties include.....

 

May a moody baby doom a yam

Not a banana baton

O geronimo no minor ego

 

Quality song!

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Well now a little bit of my brain has stopped working.

 

Thanks guys..

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