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Wednesday, January 18, 2012

The World's Weirdest Sentence

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Notice the period at the end of the preceding line?  That means it is a sentence.  No, really.  It is.  Thanks to Chelsea Brenegan and her linguistics training for enlightening me about the world's weirdest sentence. 

Need help figuring it out?  Think of it this way:  The word ''buffalo'' in the sentence has three meanings -- the animal, the city in New York and the act of ''buffaloing'' which is another word for teasing or bullying.  You could think of the sentence like this: THE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloed BY buffalo FROM Buffalo ALSO buffalo THE buffalo FROM Buffalo.

I'm still not entirely sure I get it, but I'm thoroughly intrigued!  What do you think?

4 comments:

  1. I think, at 5:05 in the morning, I'm way too NOT awake to figure it out! But, as an editor, I'm intrigued! This was a fun post, Debra--thanks!

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  2. Ha! Now you know how we spent part of our family vacation -- learning this! ;)

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  3. It seems that sometimes the educational system can go to far. I mean, "Union union, Union Union union."

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