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"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." is a grammatically valid sentence

 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo]

again, best language ever!

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Anyone who likes logic is incapable of tacos.

 

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Someone explain the word extraordinary to me. That word is a contradiction of itself.

 

How so? It's outside of the ordinary, unusual.

 

Extra ordinary = extremely ordinary.

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I guess now I know why so few English speaking people learn French, they think the English language is hard.

 

If this post offends anyone, just pm me.

Is the implication here that French is a hard language? It's not really. :3

 

I'd rather learn French than English any day.

 

I didn't mean that French was a hard language, I find that English is easier. My first language is French yet I am better in English, which only took 6 months to learn and get fluent in it.

 

Really? I find French to be easier to learn than english. The rules have less exceptions, and it seems more logical to me.

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"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." is a grammatically valid sentence

 

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo]

again, best language ever!

This too.

 

And yes, when I learned french, I never found it confusing - it always made sense what to say. Of course, I never really made much of an effort to remember it...

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Someone explain the word extraordinary to me. That word is a contradiction of itself.

 

How so? It's outside of the ordinary, unusual.

 

Extra ordinary = extremely ordinary.

 

But extra doesn't mean "a lot of", it means "beyond", "outside of".

 

You might be confusing it for "hyper", which can be used as "excessive".

 

Edit: Ah, now I see what the deal is, I was thinking about the suffix. Well, then, basically, if you say "Extraordinary" it means beyond ordinary; if you say "Extra ordinary" it means "very ordinary".

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I guess the problem for English is that it is cobbled together from a bunch of other languages, and there is no real central oversight to the rules of the language itself.

 

The other thing to consider is the difference between spoken and written English. I would say on the whole that spoken English is clearer, because it has all the non verbal communication to help you convey your exact meaning. Oddly enough, spoken English has to cope with words that sound the same and mean different things (and the fact that this was ever allowed to happen is totally stupid), while written English has to deal with words that are spelled the same but sound different and mean different things. If we all spoke with subtitles things would be perfect :lol:

 

On the whole, I think written English would be a lot harder to learn than the spoken language, because the spelling rules in English just don't make any [bleep]ing sense. We have so many sounds that can be spelled many different ways (and for the life of me I can never find the example for this, but I remember finding sounds that have upwards of 15 different valid spellings), and then just to make it more fun, we have specific letter combinations that produce totally different sounds, such as "th" in "The" and "Thursday", or even better, you have the words "though" and "through", and just for kicks, "cough" ("ough" is a lot of fun).

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One particularly inconvenience sentence I noticed when having a conversation with a friend trying to learn English the other day.

 

In Arabic, it would be: Kem ibna'akht lak?

In English, it would be: How many nephews and nieces, specifically from your sister, do you have?

 

The lack of possessive particles and relation-specific words make this sentence particularly long, while in Arabic it's three words. My friend said that English lacks the more intuitive nature that other languages have, which I'd agree with.

 

 

 

 

Random: It's also a lot easier to rhyme in Arabic and Italian than it is in English.

 

@Randox: Regarding to homophones, I think that's present in all languages. I've probably heard this one Arabic joke a million times about a foreigner who tries to tell his servant directions to deliver a package that requires that he go into the alleyway (hara) but is enraged at his servant when the servant keeps refusing to go. Little did the man know, he was telling his servant not that the alleyway would be right in front of him but that [cabbage] (khara) would be in his face.

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But try writing in Arabic. Ha, I have no clue how you guys can add so many swiggly lines to text. Is one block of writing a sentence?

 

Same goes to the Asian languages. Dash-slash-dash-slash-slash. :razz:

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One particularly inconvenience sentence I noticed when having a conversation with a friend trying to learn English the other day.

 

In Arabic, it would be: Kem ibna'akht lak?

In English, it would be: How many nephews and nieces, specifically from your sister, do you have?

 

The lack of possessive particles and relation-specific words make this sentence particularly long, while in Arabic it's three words. My friend said that English lacks the more intuitive nature that other languages have, which I'd agree with.

Or "How many children does your sister have?"

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It was supposed to be standardised, but that hasn't really happened. For instance, the dropping of 'u' in words like colour and humour, the dropping of the 'i' in Aluminium (which is a surprisingly complicated topic), and parking on a driveway + driving on a parkway in American English.

 

Obviously, English is a far spread language, so it is subject to modifications and so forth.

 

Also, the examples you give can easily be modified to sound correct when you change the voice of the construction. You're using the active voice, whereas passive would give you a better sentence, e.g. The dog bite victim was helped by the Police.

 

Although the passive voice generally complicates matters, but the object is said to have been 'acted upon' by the subject (compared to active voice whereby the subject acts upon the object, in that order), in certain cases, it can be used to clear up any ambiguity in sentence construction.

 

 

@fakeitormakeit2 - You've overcomplicated that sentence. Like riku wrote, you can simplify it down quite easily into 'How many children does your sister have?'

 

It doesn't have the same formality about it, but I'm sure you will manage fine.

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Regarding to homophones, I think that's present in all languages.

 

Not in Finnish, actually. There are pretty much no homophones in Finnish, because it's almost completely phonetic. I can only think of one pair - haltia ("elf") and haltija (a rarely used word for "owner") - but I don't think you can confuse them even if you try. I remember reading that the 'j' was added to the latter specifically so they wouldn't get confused in written language.

 

Of course in Finnish the problem isn't the exceptions but rather the rules themselves. :D

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The panda eats shoots and leaves.

 

The panda eats, shoots, and leaves.

 

That's a punctuation problem, but still :P

 

I have that book!

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The problems with the english language is just face problems,

built from dialects and non of which can be a standard completely,

but how can you give a standard to a language with soo many different versions of it

that is how i see as a problem and if you want to moan about the language just don't learn it.

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The problems with the english language is just face problems,

built from dialects and non of which can be a standard completely,

but how can you give a standard to a language with soo many different versions of it

that is how i see as a problem and if you want to moan about the language just don't learn it.

 

What did I just read? :blink:

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@Giordano, one swiggly line constitutes a word. A lot of things are implied though so sentences are comprised of less words.

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He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked... Your daily life is your temple and your religion
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Something a friend of mine put up on facebook. Thought it might be good for a laugh.

Ok so today in History we were reviewing proof reading our papers. After a few examples of grammar and misspelling we come to one of the better examples I have heard in my life. This example is how capitalization can effect your sentence.

 

"John helped his uncle Jack off a horse. OR John helped his uncle jack off a horse".

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There is a two-letter word that perhaps has more meanings than any other two-letter word,

and that is 'UP.'

 

It's easy to understand UP, meaning toward the sky or at the top of the list,

but when we awaken in the morning, why do we wake UP ?

At a meeting, why does a topic come UP?

Why do we speak UP and why are the officers UP for election

and why is it UP to the secretary to write UP a report?

We call UP our friends.

And we use it to brighten UP a room, polish UP the silver; we warm UP the leftovers and clean UP the kitchen.

We lock UP the house and some guys fix UP the old car.

At other times the little word has real special meaning.

People stir UP trouble, line UP for tickets, work UP an appetite, and think UP excuses.

To be dressed is one thing, but to be dressed UP is special.

A drain must be opened UP because it is stopped UP.

We open UP a store in the morning but we close it UP at night.

 

We seem to be pretty mixed UP about UP!

To be knowledgeable about the proper uses of UP, look the word UP in the dictionary.

In a desk-sized dictionary, it takes UP almost 1/4th of the page and can add UP to about thirty definitions.

If you are UP to it, you might try building UP a list of the many ways UP is used.

It will take UP a lot of your time, but if you don't give UP, you may wind UP with a hundred or more.

When it threatens to rain, we say it is clouding UP.

When the sun comes out we say it is clearing UP.

 

When it rains, it wets the earth and often messes things UP.

When it doesn't rain for awhile, things dry UP.

 

One could go on and on, but I'll wrap it UP,

for now my time is UP,

so........it is time to shut UP!

Now it's UP to you what you do with this email.

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You seem to be a little too literal here.

 

There's many definitions of 'up'; in the context of to 'bring up', it would mean to bring to the top of one's attention, which seems completely logical.

 

In other instances, it typically means to 'raise the magnitude' or to 'amplify'. I can't see many notable exemptions to the rule... which is most illogical?

 

EDIT - Wait, that looks like a viral email. Congratulations on accepting a fallacious argument...

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You seem to be a little too literal here.

 

There's many definitions of 'up'; in the context of to 'bring up', it would mean to bring to the top of one's attention, which seems completely logical.

 

In other instances, it typically means to 'raise the magnitude' or to 'amplify'. I can't see many notable exemptions to the rule... which is most illogical?

 

EDIT - Wait, that looks like a viral email. Congratulations on accepting a fallacious argument...

 

wake up (rise from sleep)

up for election (eligible and vying for something)

speak up (when used in context of someone is not speaking and you want them to)

to be up to someone (someone's responsibility)

write up (make a report of)

call up (call)

clean up (clean and organize)

lock up (lock down)

mixed up (confused)

look up (find a definition)

wrap up (finish)

work up (obtain by creation)

stop up (cut off flow)

dry up (disappear)

time up (no more time)

shut up (stop talking)

are up to (willing to)

 

The point is, there are a ridiculous number of phrases using the word up and it is very easy to become confused by them if you are not a native speaker. And that kind of thing is why this thread was created, so I posted it here. I accepted no fallacious anything.

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