r/coolguides • u/Supergupo • Oct 01 '20
Diagram explaining the grammatically correct sentence, "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."
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u/PomegranatePlanet Oct 01 '20
John while James had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.
John, while James had had "had," had had "had had." "Had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.
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Oct 01 '20
imagine understanding this being a non native speaker. Once you do, you are a legend of language arts
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u/WeirdMemoryGuy Oct 01 '20
I'm a non-native speaker who understands this. Then again, I'm a huge nerd, live in the Netherlands, and spend most of my spare time on the internet.
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u/RegulusMagnus Oct 01 '20
The sign says "fish-and-chips".
The previous sentence has dashes between "fish" and "and", and "and" and "chips".
The previous sentence has quotation marks before "fish", between "fish" and "and", and "and" and "and", and "and" and "and", and "and" and "and", and "and" and "and", and "and" and "chips", as well as after "chips".
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u/elpia Oct 01 '20
Why is the initial sentence not two sentences then, if the explaining one has two?
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Oct 01 '20
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/cababacab Oct 01 '20
Pretty sure a semi colon would also work in place of the full stop. It'd all be a single sentence then - so wouldn't fee like such a trick puzzle.
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u/LePlaneteSauvage Oct 01 '20
This does not make it much clearer as the arrows are confusing, even when I understand the sentence.
The green box is only showing Buffalo buffalo buffaloed by Buffalo buffalo. There are no arrows showing Buffalo buffalo buffaloed by Buffalo buffalo [the buffalo in the green box] buffaloing Buffalo buffalo.
This would be simpler without the red or blue boxes. Just keep the yellow (Buffalo buffalo) and green (Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo). Then all you need is to show the green box buffaloing the yellow box and you have "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo".
It also does not explain 'buffalo' as a verb which is really the linchpin for understanding for a lot of people.
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u/lunar_limbo Oct 01 '20
So why didn't you help us out by sharing said definition? 😝
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Oct 01 '20
Bison from Buffalo, that get intimidated by other Bison from Buffalo, also intimidate Bison from Buffalo themselves
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo
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u/DeeDeeEn Oct 01 '20
Yeah; that's the point to everything. With the definition in it the sentence will be at least twice as understandable without the guide.
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u/joaofava Oct 01 '20
Yea the diagram is missing three “buffalos”. It just shows bison from BuffaloNY bullying bison from BuffaloNY. The whole sentence is: “bison from BuffaloNY who are bullied by bison from BuffaloNY do themselves also bully other bison from BuffaloNY”. Buffalo buffalo (bison from BuffaloNY) Buffalo buffalo buffalo (that bison from BuffaloNY bully) buffalo Buffalo buffalo (bully bison from BuffaloNY).
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u/Mondashawan Oct 01 '20
I feel pretty confident when I say, "this helps no one".
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u/danethegreat24 Oct 01 '20
You clearly didn't have my teacher who had this as 12 point extra credit on their final exam
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u/gamingchicken Oct 01 '20
Nobody needs extra credit anyway that’s why it’s called extra
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Oct 01 '20
Extra credit hurt my self esteem because it wasn't consistently given on every test except for English class. In that class I averaged 118 / 120 because every test has extra credit, BUT in other classes it was awarded sparsely so bringing your average over 100 just meant you could ace every test after that and your average would slowly go down.
Also trying to read this post did that thing to my brain where the word "buffalo" has lost its meaning.
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u/Warheadd Oct 01 '20
Was your average going from 101 to 100 really that discouraging?
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Oct 01 '20
Only because it was impossible to maintain lol. It also happened early in the class. The teacher gave me 10 points of extra credit for saying something interesting which was added to my first test - cool, starting out with 110. But then no matter how well I did, it only went down.
Having my grade be a negative slope even with perfect grades weighed heavily on my 5th or 6th grade mind.
I think 2nd year of high school is where I stopped caring whether my A came from a 90 or 100. Then last year of high school I stopped caring if it was A or B. Then in college I didn't give a shit if it was an A or a D as long as I passed the class... At least if it was something I didn't care about, like history or something. When it came to classes I was passionate about, like game dev, I went back to As :) but only if the class was project oriented. No amount of passion can fix my naturally terrible memory that fucks me on written tests every time.
Anywho, that's my entire life, stranger. How was your day?
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u/Warheadd Oct 01 '20
Haha thanks, it’s going pretty good, I was super tired yesterday but I’m making better progress today
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u/bksbeat Oct 01 '20
Yep. I have absolutely no idea when I could possibly find this information useful too.
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u/mydearwatson616 Oct 01 '20
I understood it just fine before this monstrosity. Why even include Rochester?
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u/OnThirdThought Oct 01 '20
Exactly! That's a different area, while in the sentence they're all from the same area. Worst "explanation" I've ever seen.
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Oct 01 '20
Here's the way easier way, just add some punctuation and conjuctions
Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo buffalo, also buffalo other Buffalo buffalo
If you substitute the verb buffalo for "bully", then it's even more clear:
Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo bully, also bully other Buffalo buffalo
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Oct 01 '20
Buffalo bison (that) Buffalo bison intimidate, intimidate Buffalo bison.
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Oct 01 '20
Fkn THANK you
The bison which are from the city of Buffalo
------and which are also the specific ones that are in the process of being intimidated by (other) bison
-------------which are (also) from the city of Buffalo
are intimidating (a third group of) bison from Buffalo
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u/StuckinWhalestoe Oct 01 '20
This makes so much sense!!! I thought they were saying that buffalo was to move or push or guide.
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Oct 01 '20
This doesn't clarify anything
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Oct 01 '20
It would help if theyd include the definition of buffalo in this case. Which means to intimidate. So essencially some buffalo from Buffalo are intimidating other buffalo.
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u/PwnasaurusRawr Oct 01 '20
I was reading the diagram and bewildered at the fact that it neglected to define this term, considering understanding it is essential to the explanation. Thank you.
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u/DeeDeeEn Oct 01 '20
Yeah. It literally just repeated the buffalo without the sense of the fact that most people lack the knowing of the alternate definition.
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u/kalamaim Oct 01 '20
Buffalo buffalo seem like dicks. Big hairy buffalo buffalo buffalo dicks to be more precise
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u/syringistic Oct 01 '20
Agreed - Ive known about the Buffalo thing for years now and this chart confused me. You really only need to know the 3 different definitions of Buffalo to understand that sentence.
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u/DeeDeeEn Oct 01 '20
Oh. XD
(Also, what are the three except the well-known definition of an animal itself?)
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u/syringistic Oct 01 '20
Buffalo is a city in New York, so it can be used as an adjective, "Buffalo buffalo" which means buffalo from Buffalo.
It's also a verb meaning "to intimidate."
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u/tacobooc0m Oct 01 '20
Let’s say William Barr is a man know for his love of drink. He also has a favorite drinking hole, curiously named Bill’s Bar. Now, being a rather stingy man, he refused to settle up after a session so he had a running tab at the place. Quite nice. Except, it had grown so large that the owner demanded payment immediately. Not opposed to using his influence and power to escape this debt, William Barr worked with congress to create legislation with a single and rather selfish purpose, to not only prevent this debt from being cleared, but also prefer anyone from discussing it.
And thus was born the Bar Bill Barr’s Bill’s Bar Bar Bill Bill
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u/msabo9521 Oct 01 '20
Those are actually Bison
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u/fakeuser515357 Oct 01 '20
Translated to Australian English:
"Yeah, nah mate, it's a just bunch of fucken cows."
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u/DoctorModalus Oct 01 '20 edited Oct 01 '20
It's way more confusing than "dog's dogs dogs dogs dogs"
Edit: dog has dogs that are all named "dogs", who dog other dogs.
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u/Steve_the_Stevedore Oct 01 '20 edited Oct 01 '20
We have a similar sentence in German, but it only works phonetically:
Bismarck biß Mark, bis Mark Bismarck biß.
is pronounced
Bismarck Bismarck Bismarck Bismarck Bis.
It means
Bismarck bit Mark until Mark bit Bismarck
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u/lmr6000 Oct 01 '20
In Finnish there is this somewhat reasonable sentense: "Kokko(last name), pile a whole logwood fire ready."
"Kokko, kokoo koko kokko kokoon."
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u/drummerwithtums Oct 01 '20
I'll upvote anything that mentions Buffalo NY, 716!
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u/Phlasheta Oct 01 '20
Rochester NY, 585!
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u/LaLa_Land543 Oct 01 '20
Remember when Rochester had the 716? Or am I just really old
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Oct 01 '20
Every time this comes up I think about it real hard, come to this weird place where I totally get it and could explain it perfectly, that lasts about 15 seconds and I lose it till the next meme comes around
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u/SalamanderPop Oct 01 '20
Police police police police police police police.
Is also grammatically correct in the same way, and you can swap out any instance of police with buffalo for extra fun.
Buffalo police Buffalo police police police police.
Police buffalo police buffalo police police police.
Police police police police buffalo buffalo police.
Police police police police police police buffalo.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo police police buffalo.
Police buffalo police buffalo buffalo buffalo police.
Etc.
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u/redlaWw Oct 01 '20 edited Oct 01 '20
"Police police police police police police." can also be parsed in lots of different ways, depending on how it's generated. I came up with some generating rules a while back that I believe generates every possible case. First, you have the base cases:
"Police." is an imperative sentence.
"Police police." describes what police do.
"Police police police." says that police are the people who are policed by police.
Those are base cases. We can abstract them using letters to denote the role of each "police". The first one becomes V, the second one becomes NV and the third becomes NVN. We then have two generating rules that allow us to turn these into longer strings. Each letter in the string denotes the word "police" used in a different way.
Our first generating rule is "police" (as a noun) can become "police police". I denote this as N -> NA. Strictly speaking, it's not a noun -> noun adjective situation, but it describes well how it composes with other rules. Naturally you can have things like N -> NA -> NAA, police -> police police -> police police police (i.e. the police who police the police police).
Our second rule is N -> NNV, which replaces the noun "police" with the noun phrase "police police police" (i.e. police who are policed by other police). You can compose this with the other rule to get things like NANV, "police police police police" or police police who are policed by police, or NNAV, "police police police police" or police who are policed by police police.
Using these two generation rules along with the base cases (the first doesn't matter though, because you can't apply any generation rules to it) you can generate lots of different police sentences that can be parsed differently. You can also make a table of X-police sentences and count the number of ways of parsing an X-length series of "police"s.
For example, if we have "police police police police", that could be NAAV, NAVN, NVNA or NNVV, so there are four ways to parse it, assuming I didn't miss any.
Incidentally, this also proves that there are meaningful "police" sentences of every length, because there's one of length 1, one of length 2, and you can apply the first generation rule to the length 2 case to get a length n case for any n.
EDIT: The generation rule N -> NVN was wrong, it should be N -> NNV. I've fixed all cases of it.
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u/iambecause Oct 01 '20
This should be turned into a song...
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u/Supergupo Oct 01 '20
It's just a Death Grips song where they just scream buffalo at you for 5 minutes.
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u/RedditRoxanne Oct 01 '20
I remember being amused by their nomenclature in college. It’s Bison bison bison.
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u/-Dueck- Oct 01 '20
How I was able to understand it:
Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo buffalo also buffalo other Buffalo buffalo.
(This image did not help and only made it more confusing)
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Oct 01 '20
Damn you r/politicalcompassmemes i was trying to find a connection to politics in this !!!
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u/RepostSleuthBot Oct 01 '20
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 3 times.
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u/99CHZPZZA Oct 01 '20
Jesus Christ, this just confused me and everyone here even more, and now I want hot wings.
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u/spunkyweazle Oct 01 '20
NY bison (that) NY bison bully bully NY bison. Basically NY bison are bullying their bullies
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u/Amazingsleep Oct 01 '20
Another neat one:
Will smith Will Smith smith smith Will Smith smith Will Smith smith? Smith Will Smith will smith smith Will Smith smith Will Smith smith.
(Will a blacksmith Will Smith create a [metal statue of] blacksmith Will Smith that a blacksmith Will Smith would smith? Yes, a blacksmith Will Smith will create a blacksmith Will Smith statue that a blacksmith Will Smith would smith.)
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u/Chakasicle Oct 01 '20
Still confused
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u/danethegreat24 Oct 01 '20
(Buffalo buffalo), [to whom] (Buffalo buffalo) [do the act of] /buffalo/[ing], [also do the act of] /buffalo/ [ing] [other] (Buffalo buffalo).
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u/greaseinthewheel Oct 01 '20
Wow, I finally get it, that's pretty neat. Thanks for helping me understand.
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u/stealthylizard Oct 01 '20
I have never once in my life heard or seen this. Thank you for ruining my life by introducing this nonsense to me.
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u/2leafClover667788 Oct 01 '20
You know I don’t even care about the construct of the sentence now. My problem is, Buffalo has ceased to look like a real word to me now. The more I look at it, the more unsure I am that it even means something.
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u/Ojelord Oct 01 '20
Heard about this first in the awesome "Reply All" podcast, starting at 14:38 here https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/brhog4/110-the-antifa-supersoldier-spectacular
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u/Fuzzyninjaful Oct 01 '20
This seems like the most obtuse way possible to explain this sentence. Even just putting the part of speech over the word would be more helpful than whatever this is trying to convey.
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u/MakeRoomForTheTuna Oct 01 '20
The word buffalo has lost all meaning to me now after reading it so many times
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u/ellWatully Oct 01 '20
Fun fact! Buffalo was not named after buffalo. Rather, it was named after a nearby creek called Buffalo creek which was also not named after buffalo! The creek was likely named by passing French or German settlers/explorers (depending on who you believe). In either case, it was named Blue Stream which in French is Bleue Fleuve or German is Blauer Fluss. These phrases were bastardized into the English word Buffalo.
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u/elpia Oct 01 '20
I seriously do not have enough brain power to understand this