• disguy_ovahea@lemmy.world
    971·
    25 days ago

    The landlord of a pub called The Pig And Whistle asked a sign writer to make a new sign. When he saw it he thought that the words were too close together, so he said to the sign writer “I want more space between Pig and And and And and Whistle”.

    • BluesF@lemmy.world
      211·
      25 days ago

      Inspired by the story, another landlord decides to name their pub “Pig and And and And and Whistle.” Lo and behold, the sign was cramped… Ther needed more space between Pig and and and and and And and And and and and and and And and And and and and and and Whistle.

  • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
    64·
    25 days ago

    You can create a sentence with an infinite number of “police”

    Who polices the Police?

    Police Police police Police.

    Who polices the Police Police?

    Police Police Police police Police Police.

    And so on…

  • AirBreather@lemmy.world
    581·
    25 days ago

    James, while John had had “had”, had had “had had;” “had had” had had a greater effect on the teacher.

  • Purox@feddit.org
    28·
    25 days ago

    In German the following is a completely valid sentence:

    Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach.

    Which translates to when flies fly behind flies, then flies follow flies. The same works for seals:

    Wenn hinter Robben Robben Robben, robben Robben Robben nach.

    • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      24·
      25 days ago

      Some Hungarian prefixes can be piled on without limit, while still creating meaning.

      The word “úszni” means “to swim”.

      Úsztatni - to make someone or someone swim
      Úsztattatni - to make someone make someone swim
      Úsztattattattattattattattattattni - to make someone make someone make someone … make someone swim

      Can be done with any verb, and maybe some other suffixes as well.

        • ℍ𝕂-𝟞𝟝@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          6·
          25 days ago

          It’s basically a mishmash of Ancient Ugric, Turkish, German, Slavic and Romani words with grammar that is an eldritch monstrosity, nobody really knows where it came from, and it is seriously weird.

          There are only two real tenses, but nineteen cases and two different ways of doing imperative, which are kind of equivalent but carry cultural and tonal differences in certain contexts.

      • jorm1s@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        24 days ago

        Strangely enough, this works in Finnish too:

        Uida - to swim

        Uittaa - to make someone or something swim

        Uitattaa - to make someone make someone swim

        Uitattattattattattattattattattaa - to make someone make someone make someone … make someone swim

        It’s almost as if they are related languages or something.

    • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
      121·
      25 days ago

      English has Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo

      I don’t know what it means but I’ve been told it is indeed a full sentence.

    • mutter9355@discuss.tchncs.de
      4·
      25 days ago

      The same works in Dutch:

      Als vliegen achter vliegen vliegen, vliegen vliegen vliegen achterna.

      Although my favourite form of that tongue twister is:

      Als vliegende vliegen achter vliegende vliegen vliegen, vliegen de vliegende vliegen vliegensvlug.

      When flying flies fly behind flying flies, the flying flies fly rapidly (“flying fast”).

      • Bob@feddit.nl
        1·
        24 days ago

        You can say “fleetly” instead of “rapidly”. Actually “rapidly” sounds incorrect when describing flying.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
    25·
    24 days ago

    It annoys me so much when I feel I need to write a sentence like that that I go to great lengths to restructure sentences to avoid it.

    …fuck

    • Prethoryn Overmind@lemmy.world
      5·
      24 days ago

      Your grammar and sanity are better for it. Actually, most cases I’m which a double that is used you can probably get away with a single that.

        • Jax@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          24 days ago

          “It is true that that’s almost never necessary.”

          I can’t wrap my head around this, logically it’s still a ‘double that’ but the short form makes it palatable to read/say.

  • BartyDeCanter@lemmy.sdf.org
    252·
    25 days ago

    “That that” can and probably should be replaced with “that which” in almost every instance it is used.

    Edit: or “when that”

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    201·
    25 days ago

    “That that” spoken are two different sounding words so it makes sense. When it goes from verbal to written and I see it, I will almost always try to rephrase things to avoid that combo. It just jumps out as totally wrong.

      • ornery_chemist@mander.xyz
        3·
        25 days ago

        In fluent speech, the conjunction (the first “that”) is unstressed, and as a result some speakers reduce the vowel a bit toward schwa. However, if you told those speakers to carefully pronounce each word, I bet they would pronounce the conjunction and the pronoun the exact same same. A more common example of this kind of reduction is the word “to”, which is almost always reduced to /tə/ ([tə] ~ [tʊ] ~ [ɾə] depending on dialect and surrounding words) in everyday speech when unstressed.

        Fun fact, you can reduce just about every unstressed vowel in English to schwa (if it’s not already a schwa) and still be largely understood.

    • dan@upvote.au
      41·
      25 days ago

      Given the fact that that poem is 100 years old, I would have thought that English would have evolved to fix these issues by now. Oh well.

      We need a new language I guess. Maybe it’s time to switch to the most popular language in the world (in terms of number of native speakers): Mandarin Chinese.

      • lad@programming.devEnglish
        3·
        25 days ago

        Maybe better use second most popular: Spanish, it at least uses same letters (differently though ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

      • ouRKaoS@lemmy.today
        1·
        25 days ago

        The use of emojis is.slowly converting written language back to hieroglyphics, so your new language is already happening.

    • khannie@lemmy.worldEnglish
      271·
      25 days ago

      It needs a comma.

      All the good faith I had had, had had no effect.

      Essentially “all the food faith I previously had, didn’t have any effect”.

      Good God English is an awful language.

      • Classy@sh.itjust.works
        13·
        25 days ago

        I’m pretty sure it is grammatically correct with no comma. The version you provided is a comma splice.

        To slightly change the tense, All the good faith that I had had no effect is grammatically correct with no comma, so the gerund form should also not need a comma.

        • khannie@lemmy.worldEnglish
          81·
          25 days ago

          Perhaps. Regardless it’s outlandish abuse of the tongue IMO and definitely would benefit from the comma because nobody’s going to just bang out 4 had’s in a row in speech without a pause without a justifiable slap across the chops and possibly a challenge to a duel.

          “But your honour, he said ‘had’ four times on the trot without pause”

          “Case dismissed”

        • khannie@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          25 days ago

          You’re welcome. :) Took me a minute tbh. Not sure if the wine I’ve had helped or hindered. It’s 2:30am here.

        • khannie@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          25 days ago

          True enough but I feel like English has more quirks than other languages though I acknowledge that may be bias.

          I used to have near fluent Irish way back when and I don’t recall any shenanigans like this (again I acknowledge I may not have been presented with them). I feel like most other languages have a more clearly defined set of pronunciation rules too.

          Irish looks horrific (Siobhán is shiv-awn for example) but very very closely follows pronunciation rules so that pronunciation would be no surprise to a native reading it for the first time. English sure as fuck does not follow rules like that.

          Near. Neat. Book. Boot. Etc.

          (Some small subset of Irish folks do say “boo-k” though)

          • pyre@lemmy.world
            3·
            24 days ago

            maybe I should have clarified: not every language has quirks in the same ways. German has weird articles that make no sense. French has different pluralization rules for up to four objects. e: this is probably wrong but there are many languages with different pluralizations for two objects (a dual) and for any number more than two. there are remnants of this in English as well, in words like both, either and neither.

            But even of you just want to think about writing: German makes super long words that look monstrous by mushing words together. French doesn’t pronounce half the letters in its spelling. Arabic doesn’t really have vowels but instead uses diacritics that are often omitted so you have to be really familiar with the language to read at all.

              • pyre@lemmy.world
                1·
                24 days ago

                well I can’t find a source for it now. maybe I’m misremembering. I read it in the book The Universal History of Numbers by Georges Ifrah. maybe it was referring to some remnant exception, maybe it was about another language. can’t verify it cause the book is not nearby right now. maybe I confused it with four different ways to pluralize in French (s, x, aux, none) idk.

                • zaphod@sopuli.xyz
                  1·
                  23 days ago

                  Oh, you mean word endings for plurals, well those depend on the gender and the singular word ending. They can be a bit confusing, because they’re not always regular like local -> locaux, but naval -> navals. You have that in other languages too, even in english, like goose -> geese, but moose -> moose, mouse -> mice, house -> houses, and so on.

    • DillyDaily@lemmy.world
      3·
      24 days ago

      I still feel like the nouns are in the wrong place when I read this.

      I’m reading it as “New York cows new York cows bully bully New York cows”

      When I want it to read “New York cows bully new York cows” which would be “Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo” which isn’t enough buffalo.

      I have to inset my own “that” to be able to get my head around “Buffalo buffalo (that) Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo”