Thursday, January 10, 2008

Never try to buffalo Buffalo buffalo

And now, for something completely different: Courtesy of the Lighten Up Brigade (aka my friend Eric V.), I give you the following grammatically correct English sentence:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
This is properly paraphrased as

Bison from the city of Buffalo who are bullied by other bison from the city of Buffalo in turn bully yet other bison from the city of Buffalo.
Mentally supplying the word 'whom' or 'that' between the second and third occurrences of 'buffalo' helps a lot. Yet the sentence is correct without that word, as when the word 'that' is left out of the phrase "games people play."

Now, didn't you always want to know that?

Crossposted at What's Wrong with the World

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