"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence in English that is often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought.
The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo:
As an attributive noun (acting as an adjective) to refer to a specific place named Buffalo, such as the city of Buffalo, New York;
As the verb to buffalo, meaning (in American English[1][2]) "to bully, harass, or intimidate" or "to baffle"; and
As a noun to refer to the animal (either the true buffalo or the bison). The plural is also buffalo.
A semantically equivalent form preserving the original word order is: "Buffalonian bison that other Buffalonian bison bully also bully Buffalonian bison."
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word, That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: It’s said like bed, not bead -- For goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat… They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not the moth in mother, Nor both in bother, nor broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose -- Just look them up -- and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward, And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart, Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why, sakes alive! I’d learned to speak it when I was five.
And yet, to write it, the more I tried, I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five
you ain't shit - shit still functions as an adjective, in some contexts this might be a good thing, but the phrase "you ain't ____" most often is used to say the person doesn't reach the level of the blank. For example "you ain't all that" means you think/act like you are "all that" but you're not at the level of "all that" you're less than all that. If you "ain't shit" it means you're so bad that you're less than shit, you dont even reach the level of shit with how bad you are. This is a devestating insult.
you are not the shit - the shit is a noun, its good, so not being the shit is insulting
you are the shit - the shit is a noun meaning good so this is a complement
ain't is a contraction of "am/are not" popularized in the early 1700s, combined with the syncopic haplology of a definite article: so still works with the noun part. I agree this doesn't make it easier for people to learn English, but it's not like every other language in the world doesn't have this.
So do "based on" and "based off" now. I can't figure where "based off" came from or why we need it. A base has always been something you put things on. Things sit ON a base. They're based ON it. Don't get me started. Ok, too late... sorry.
My daughter says based off. Come to think of it I remember long ago noticing that DJs say a song is "off" an album and thinking no, songs are ON albums. OCD is a beautiful thing.
is this really about learning the English language, or is this about learning insular colloquialisms and slang? you never stop learning slang, even natives....
Right this is a pretty awful example of English as a language. Like if I talk to a skibidi brainrot kid today I'd hear all sorts of shit I wouldn't understand at all like:
"Bruh I literally I need to get on my sigma grindset and start mewing so I can looks max and pull that shmlawg gyatt with the rizzle. Then I can stop gooning like a beta sussy imposter. Bet she won't fanum tax my bussin' glizzy or there'll be a whole bunch of turbulence and I'd literally hit the griddy on her. Only in ohio tho. Skibidi!"
I wouldn't really say that means I don't understand English as a language. Just that people are weird as hell with slang.
I've learned a little bit of two other languages (Spanish and Japanese) and I'm pretty confident that most languages have a ton of nuance like this that you will never understand until you are actually totally immersed in that language and culture.
I mean, everything I learned in Spanish and Japanese is all super formal. Nobody actually talks that way IRL. There's words that from a translator or dictionary mean one thing, but are colloquially used totally differently. Like calling testicles eggs or nuts. "Chupa mi heuvos." They're not saying to suck their literal eggs.
I know less Japanese than Spanish but I already notice that, like, "no" isn't ever annunciated the way I'm being taught. Instead of "iie" I'll often hear just "ya." It teaches to end every statement with "desu," but I have never heard a sentence end with a desu or desu ka in any Japanese media (which is more than just anime). It's all way more casual. Questions are still understood to be questions if you use the right inflection; no need for extra syllables.
There are better cases for elision of sounds than iie and iya, as the latter is a different word, sort of like no and nope in English. For example in more formal contexts you'd use ~teiru at the end of verbs and pronounce the i vowel, but in casual speech it's elided to sound like ~teru.
Not to be one of those people, but the poster you sent is actually not Swedish. The first sentence is either Danish or Norwegian. You're still right about the word fart meaning something different in Swedish though.
The structure of those sentences are very straightforward. The cultural zeitgeist that caused that one iteration to become positive in meaning is just random chance.
Like nested replies on Reddit that all say the same thing. All of them are being upvoted, except one of them is randomly being downvoted into oblivion.
Simple - one must strive not simply to be A shit but to be THE shit - The plutonic ideal of shit, the perfect shit from which all other shits are derivitive. Anything less is a failure. So following this logic.
"You ain't shit" = You are invalid from the rubric, so below par as not to be mentionable.
"You are shit" = Acknowledgement that you are shit of average or middling status but with the implications that vast improvement is nessisary because you are still a failure.
"You are not the shit" = More directed pointed reminder that you are far below the goal of being THE shit and maybe are overestimating yourself.
i'd still take this over the ett/en thing in swedish. basically, "ett" and "en" both mean "a" if they come before the word, and "the" if they get smashed onto the end of a word. (e.g., "ett apotek" means "a pharmacy", but "apoteket" means "the pharmacy"; "en hund" means "a dog", but "hunden" means "the dog".)
but despite "ett" and "en" meaning the same thing, they aren't interchangeable. some words are "ett" words, while others are "en" words, and you just have to remember which ones are which.
to further complicate things, there are some words that can end with "et" or "en", but each ending means something different. this typically happens with "ett" words using "en" for the plural forms of the word. for example, "barn" means "child", "ett barn" means "a child", "barnet" means "the child", but "barnen" means "the children". (it's worth also mentioning that "barn" means either "child" or "children", depending on the context.)
Lots of languages have gendered nouns, though. Three genders isn't uncommon in European languages and in most cases you just have to learn the nouns with their genders.
you’re right that lots of other languages have gendered nouns. however, swedish nouns are not gendered in the “traditional” sense. i.e., it is not the case that some nouns are “masculine” and others are “feminine”.
i think the wikipedia page does a good job of explaining it:
Nouns have one of two grammatical genders: common(utrum) and neuter (neutrum), which determine their definite forms as well as the form of any adjectives and articles used to describe them. Noun gender is largely arbitrary and must be memorized; however, around three quarters of all Swedish nouns are common gender. Living beings are often common nouns, like in enkatt "a cat", enhäst "a horse", en*fluga* "a fly", etc.
edit: i wanted to clarify that this isn’t some major gripe i have with the language. i think all spoken languages are bound to have their own quirks and that’s okay, it can just make certain things a bit tricky when learning the language. as a whole, i think swedish is a very nice language
Swedish used to have masculine and feminine gendered nouns historically - and some dialects still do - but they were simplified into two grammatical genders, utrum and neutrum, just as your link says. (There are remnants though, for example "vad är klockan?" "hon är halv fyra"). Masculine and feminine were just squashed into the "utrum" gender, basically, and neutrum is neuter.
thank you for the explanation. that helps to clear things up a bit and it’s also nice to have some context for why things are the way they are in the language. i had always been told that the “ett/en” thing was just an arbitrary quirk of the language, so it’s nice to get a more concrete explanation of it.
the example you gave was also super helpful. i found it confusing that sometimes “hon” meant “it”. i had always been told (in casual conversations) that swedish wasn’t a gendered language, so that whole thing was quite confusing until now.
Then it might also be useful to know that in these cases, it's also correct to say "den är halv tio" which might be a safer route for non-native speakers.
Kudos on you learning swedish though, it's not always easy or completely logical but coming from English a lot of things should come for free.
I've known of this supposed sentence and still can't parse whatever the fuck is connecting the two groups of bullying animals who are both from the upstate NY city.
Yeah, Buffalo has a few less known meanings. One is "to bully" or something.
Of course you also have the animal, Buffalo, which is just a bison IIRC, and then you have Buffalo the place.
So Buffalo (bison) from Buffalo (place), Buffalo (bully), Buffalo (bison) from Buffalo (place).
....Someone else commented explaining the groups, I'm summarizing here.
Anyways, one way to refer to a thing from a place is to put the place before the thing, like "new York pigeons". Aka, pigeons from New York.... But phrasing it with the location first omits the "from", so Buffalo from Buffalo, is simply "Buffalo Buffalo" are bullying (aka Buffalo) "Buffalo Buffalo"... Etc.
This sentence probably worked better at a time when "buffalo" was actually a commonly used verb. It's also made really confusing by using a "reduced relative clause" in a way that almost no native speaker would use it.
You can use a reduced relative clause in ways that aren't at all confusing, like:
"The burger I ate was delicious" vs. with a normal relative clause "The burger that I ate was delicious".
But this one is more like:
"Gazelles lions eat are slow." vs. "Gazelles that lions eat are slow."
I don't know what exactly it is, but that is much more confusing. Maybe because the distinction between the subject (Gazelles) and the relative clause ([that] lions eat) is much less obvious, making it hard to parse.
Remind me again how this works?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo
"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically correct sentence in English that is often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity. It has been discussed in literature in various forms since 1967, when it appeared in Dmitri Borgmann's Beyond Language: Adventures in Word and Thought. The sentence employs three distinct meanings of the word buffalo:
A semantically equivalent form preserving the original word order is: "Buffalonian bison that other Buffalonian bison bully also bully Buffalonian bison."
I've never understood it until this comment - well done!
Tbh, neither did I until I read it hahaha
Abeolute legend you are, thank you!
Wow, hurt people hurt people. Even Buffalo buffalo
It doesn’t, but that won’t stop pedants from pretending it does so they can feel smarter than you.
This isn't pedantic, it's just a fun playing with word. And don't even bother to call me a pedant for pointing this out.
Wenn Fliegen hinter Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach.
The horse raced past the barn fell.
In the title of the show, there are spaces between Tom and And and And and Jerry.
The King’s English
I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, slough and through.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word, That looks like beard but sounds like bird.
And dead: It’s said like bed, not bead -- For goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed!
Watch out for meat and great and threat… They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.
A moth is not the moth in mother, Nor both in bother, nor broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there, Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there’s dose and rose and lose -- Just look them up -- and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward, And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go, then thwart and cart, Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why, sakes alive! I’d learned to speak it when I was five.
And yet, to write it, the more I tried, I hadn’t learned it at fifty-five
My mistake. I had it saved in an old note. Thanks for the correction!
🤔
shit - adjective, bad
the shit - noun, good
.
you are shit - shit is an adjective, you are bad
you ain't shit - shit still functions as an adjective, in some contexts this might be a good thing, but the phrase "you ain't ____" most often is used to say the person doesn't reach the level of the blank. For example "you ain't all that" means you think/act like you are "all that" but you're not at the level of "all that" you're less than all that. If you "ain't shit" it means you're so bad that you're less than shit, you dont even reach the level of shit with how bad you are. This is a devestating insult.
you are not the shit - the shit is a noun, its good, so not being the shit is insulting
you are the shit - the shit is a noun meaning good so this is a complement
"We're in the shit now" - the shit, noun, bad
ain't is a contraction of "am/are not" popularized in the early 1700s, combined with the syncopic haplology of a definite article: so still works with the noun part. I agree this doesn't make it easier for people to learn English, but it's not like every other language in the world doesn't have this.
TIL, be a noun, don't be a fucking adjective.
"I'm down for anything" and "I'm up for anything" mean the same thing.
So do "based on" and "based off" now. I can't figure where "based off" came from or why we need it. A base has always been something you put things on. Things sit ON a base. They're based ON it. Don't get me started. Ok, too late... sorry.
Based off OF. they took parts off of the base and put them in their stock script about a love triangle.
My daughter says based off. Come to think of it I remember long ago noticing that DJs say a song is "off" an album and thinking no, songs are ON albums. OCD is a beautiful thing.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/based-on-vs-based-off
Disagree, to me 'down' implies youre open to chill events (i.e. sitting down) whereas 'up' youre open to more active events. But thats me.
I don't think that's a universally recognized distinction, but the more you use it that way and spread it around it could be one day soon.
Language is weird.
Agreed
Same with "drive down the street" or "drive up the street"
Clearly by getting their shit together
Reminds me of a funny performance about the topic by a commedian named ISMO. He does a lot of things with the English language.
Came here to share Ismo too!
His bit on ass is funny as hell too
Its basically ripped from this guys act.
is this really about learning the English language, or is this about learning insular colloquialisms and slang? you never stop learning slang, even natives....
Right this is a pretty awful example of English as a language. Like if I talk to a skibidi brainrot kid today I'd hear all sorts of shit I wouldn't understand at all like:
"Bruh I literally I need to get on my sigma grindset and start mewing so I can looks max and pull that shmlawg gyatt with the rizzle. Then I can stop gooning like a beta sussy imposter. Bet she won't fanum tax my bussin' glizzy or there'll be a whole bunch of turbulence and I'd literally hit the griddy on her. Only in ohio tho. Skibidi!"
I wouldn't really say that means I don't understand English as a language. Just that people are weird as hell with slang.
No cap.
I've learned a little bit of two other languages (Spanish and Japanese) and I'm pretty confident that most languages have a ton of nuance like this that you will never understand until you are actually totally immersed in that language and culture.
I mean, everything I learned in Spanish and Japanese is all super formal. Nobody actually talks that way IRL. There's words that from a translator or dictionary mean one thing, but are colloquially used totally differently. Like calling testicles eggs or nuts. "Chupa mi heuvos." They're not saying to suck their literal eggs.
I know less Japanese than Spanish but I already notice that, like, "no" isn't ever annunciated the way I'm being taught. Instead of "iie" I'll often hear just "ya." It teaches to end every statement with "desu," but I have never heard a sentence end with a desu or desu ka in any Japanese media (which is more than just anime). It's all way more casual. Questions are still understood to be questions if you use the right inflection; no need for extra syllables.
There are better cases for elision of sounds than iie and iya, as the latter is a different word, sort of like no and nope in English. For example in more formal contexts you'd use ~teiru at the end of verbs and pronounce the i vowel, but in casual speech it's elided to sound like ~teru.
So...Chupa Chups are literally suck sucks?
In Spanish, chupa means either suck or lick depending on context.
Chupa chups are lick licks.
Spanish:
"Me cago en la leche" I shit on the milk -> something bad happened, and I'm angry.
"Eres la leche" You are the milk -> you are great.
Damn, in English we can say one "shit the bed," but I might need to adapt this Spanish phrase and start saying I shit the milk.
I mean German isn't any easier: Umfahren means to run over someone And Umfahren means to drive around something
Swedish:
Infart, utfart, din fart and just
That's all, I'm done.
Not to be one of those people, but the poster you sent is actually not Swedish. The first sentence is either Danish or Norwegian. You're still right about the word fart meaning something different in Swedish though.
When pronunciation matters!
Learning slang, in which words aren't meant literally, is pure memorization and no more difficult in one language than another.
By being shit
Then doing shit
Then becoming the shit.
https://youtu.be/e2HQaF_vfes
Stop that shit!
(Funny video, but I couldn't not comment this)
I feel like "Tonality" is a big part of it.
Easy, don't learn no shit vocab.
No shit.
EnglishAmerican Culture.The structure of those sentences are very straightforward. The cultural zeitgeist that caused that one iteration to become positive in meaning is just random chance.
Like nested replies on Reddit that all say the same thing. All of them are being upvoted, except one of them is randomly being downvoted into oblivion.
Cat.
Learn? They're all shit at it.
Simple - one must strive not simply to be A shit but to be THE shit - The plutonic ideal of shit, the perfect shit from which all other shits are derivitive. Anything less is a failure. So following this logic.
"You ain't shit" = You are invalid from the rubric, so below par as not to be mentionable.
"You are shit" = Acknowledgement that you are shit of average or middling status but with the implications that vast improvement is nessisary because you are still a failure.
"You are not the shit" = More directed pointed reminder that you are far below the goal of being THE shit and maybe are overestimating yourself.
The complimentary nature is recessive requiring both positive and THE qualifiers rather than any negative or A qualifier.
Very, very slowly.
Thanks, Ismo
Laughing shit my off...?
Ismo is a Finnish comedian! He has a joke in one of his routines that plays out just like this. And that first letter is a capital i.
i'd still take this over the ett/en thing in swedish. basically, "ett" and "en" both mean "a" if they come before the word, and "the" if they get smashed onto the end of a word. (e.g., "ett apotek" means "a pharmacy", but "apoteket" means "the pharmacy"; "en hund" means "a dog", but "hunden" means "the dog".)
but despite "ett" and "en" meaning the same thing, they aren't interchangeable. some words are "ett" words, while others are "en" words, and you just have to remember which ones are which.
to further complicate things, there are some words that can end with "et" or "en", but each ending means something different. this typically happens with "ett" words using "en" for the plural forms of the word. for example, "barn" means "child", "ett barn" means "a child", "barnet" means "the child", but "barnen" means "the children". (it's worth also mentioning that "barn" means either "child" or "children", depending on the context.)
Lots of languages have gendered nouns, though. Three genders isn't uncommon in European languages and in most cases you just have to learn the nouns with their genders.
you’re right that lots of other languages have gendered nouns. however, swedish nouns are not gendered in the “traditional” sense. i.e., it is not the case that some nouns are “masculine” and others are “feminine”.
i think the wikipedia page does a good job of explaining it:
edit: i wanted to clarify that this isn’t some major gripe i have with the language. i think all spoken languages are bound to have their own quirks and that’s okay, it can just make certain things a bit tricky when learning the language. as a whole, i think swedish is a very nice language
Swedish used to have masculine and feminine gendered nouns historically - and some dialects still do - but they were simplified into two grammatical genders, utrum and neutrum, just as your link says. (There are remnants though, for example "vad är klockan?" "hon är halv fyra"). Masculine and feminine were just squashed into the "utrum" gender, basically, and neutrum is neuter.
thank you for the explanation. that helps to clear things up a bit and it’s also nice to have some context for why things are the way they are in the language. i had always been told that the “ett/en” thing was just an arbitrary quirk of the language, so it’s nice to get a more concrete explanation of it.
the example you gave was also super helpful. i found it confusing that sometimes “hon” meant “it”. i had always been told (in casual conversations) that swedish wasn’t a gendered language, so that whole thing was quite confusing until now.
Then it might also be useful to know that in these cases, it's also correct to say "den är halv tio" which might be a safer route for non-native speakers.
Kudos on you learning swedish though, it's not always easy or completely logical but coming from English a lot of things should come for free.
Itt: monolinguist native english speakers who thinks a completely common concept is exclusive to english.
Police police police police police police.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
I've known of this supposed sentence and still can't parse whatever the fuck is connecting the two groups of bullying animals who are both from the upstate NY city.
…buffalo?
Yeah, Buffalo has a few less known meanings. One is "to bully" or something.
Of course you also have the animal, Buffalo, which is just a bison IIRC, and then you have Buffalo the place.
So Buffalo (bison) from Buffalo (place), Buffalo (bully), Buffalo (bison) from Buffalo (place).
....Someone else commented explaining the groups, I'm summarizing here.
Anyways, one way to refer to a thing from a place is to put the place before the thing, like "new York pigeons". Aka, pigeons from New York.... But phrasing it with the location first omits the "from", so Buffalo from Buffalo, is simply "Buffalo Buffalo" are bullying (aka Buffalo) "Buffalo Buffalo"... Etc.
It took me a while to "get it" too.
Buffalo bison that other Buffalo bison bully also bully Buffalo bison.
There are three groups, the bullies, the bullied bullies, and the bullied.
American bisons from the city of Buffalo: (Buffalo buffalo)
[that]
American bisons from the city of Buffalo confuse: (Buffalo buffalo buffalo)
[also]
confuse American bisons from the city of Buffalo: (buffalo Buffalo buffalo)
Syracuse cows Syracuse cows confuse confuse Syracuse cows.
This sentence probably worked better at a time when "buffalo" was actually a commonly used verb. It's also made really confusing by using a "reduced relative clause" in a way that almost no native speaker would use it.
You can use a reduced relative clause in ways that aren't at all confusing, like:
"The burger I ate was delicious" vs. with a normal relative clause "The burger that I ate was delicious".
But this one is more like:
"Gazelles lions eat are slow." vs. "Gazelles that lions eat are slow."
I don't know what exactly it is, but that is much more confusing. Maybe because the distinction between the subject (Gazelles) and the relative clause ([that] lions eat) is much less obvious, making it hard to parse.
shit and fuck are the most versatile words
Fuck that shit.
By going back to the late 90s and watching Cartoon Network, duuh.
Not joking, this is how I passively learned it Courage, Muttley,KND those were the shit.
Raises hand. "Son of beetch."
Skill issue
They generally leave the shitty bits to more advanced learners.
I thought I knew what shit means
Context
This is due to the legendary reputation of "the shit", which is distinct from the ordinary "shit" we are all familiar with.
"The shit" has rarely ever been so equaled by a living being that its use is usually correlated with great admiration and flattery.
In some convoluted terminology, "the shit" can be referred to simply as "shit" confusing it with its inferior cousin.
accuracy through obscurity and debate...the american english language
Don't forget most places speak English because the UK colonized them.
"Most junkiest" is a redundancy.