![[0593] Buffalo Buffalo](/comics/2014-06-26-0593-buffalo-buffalo.png "[0593] Buffalo Buffalo")
Have you already seen the announcement in the news section about the Sandra and Woo fanart contest 2014 with over $500 of prize money?
Kudos to Martin Gardner for Sandra’s sentence. More examples here.
- Woo: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
- Sandra: Wouldn’t the sentence “I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and and and and and Chips in my Fish-and-Chips sign” have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and 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?
- Sandra: Amateur.
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Awesome. I love those sentences.
Wow. dunno if that even makes sense.
First! 😀 Which is not hard, seeing as i’m subscribed to the RSS feed.
I thought new pages to this comic were published at midnight GMT, and I got this notification at midnight GMT +2, is germany on GMT +2?
Is this a ‘thing’ that I’m not aware of existing until now?
At any rate, impressive Sandra. Looks like Seeoahtlahmakaskay has blessed you with verbal trickery worthy of a raccoon!
@ ░▒▓█│Walkman│█▓▒░:
Someone beat ya to the punch, good sir.
Stop making me feel dumb.
What is going on in this comic?
Uh… Pardon me but I don’t get it…Can somebody explain?
What? I don’t get it. Why would you need that many ‘and’s in a scentence? Also The first panel makes me want some Buffalo Chicken. Mmmmm yum!
I think I went blind after seeing black and white dots. And did the text change?
BTW Woo, challenge Sandra to a bug eating contest, she’ll lose.
Sniff Sniff I smell a grammar and punctuation nazi.
First comment here.
This is what is happening:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo
It’s a word with multiple meaning, so it does as a noun, verb , and a proper noun.
It’s used to indicate how complex the sentence could be.
The word “and” lost all of its meaning to me after this strip, both graphic and phonetic.
Sandra’s rhyme sounds like a rap-rap-song.
I’ve learned about the sentence woo uses here just yesterday in another comic’s comment section. Probably a coincidence, but an amusing one. 🙂
Ah no, no way. These things just make me despair. I mean, with all the words out there to express our ideas in an elegant manner, doing that kind of thing is just cruel.
Not talking about the comic itself though, which is hilarious. Last panel is absolutely priceless.
Fun! I’ll see how many of these I can remember…
That that is, is. That that is not, is not. That that is is not that that is not, nor is that that is not that that is.
And on that note try this on for size! It gets progressively harder to keep track of the syntax and entities, and thus give the words the right emphasis and spacing, as you work down the list.
I saw that C saw.
C saw that that I saw.
I saw that that that C saw was so.
C saw that that that that I saw was so.
I saw that that that that that C saw was so.
C saw that that that that that that I saw was so.
It can proceed further in the same manner, but you get the idea.
Uuuuuhhhhh Hodor… 😐
I’m very confused.
In theory, I understand exactly what’s going on in this comic.
In practice, I try to read this comic, black out halfway through the third panel, and wake up ten minutes later in the driveway with a strange ringing in my ears.
Pretty sure that was intentional, though, in which case I say Well Done.
And just for fun… read each numeral individually.
11 was a race car,
22 was 12,
1111 race,
And 22112!
@ ░▒▓█│Walkman│█▓▒░:
Yes, at the moment we have CEST, which is GMT+2 without summer time (CET) we are GMT+1 here.
The sentence makes more sense when you read the sentence as it’s supposed to as marked by punctuation rather than reading all the ‘ands’ as if nothing was there. People sometimes have a hard time understanding sentence tricks like this if they don’t know what should and shouldn’t be emphasized. Ah… the English language is both wonderful and confusing.
Try Finnish –
-Kokko, kokoo kokoon koko kokko!——Kokko, gather the whole bonfire together!
-Koko kokkoko?————————The whole bonfire?
-Koko kokko.————————–The whole bonfire.
Kokooko Kokko kokoon koko kokon!?—–Will Kokko gather up the whole bonfire!?
Kokko kokoo kokoon koko kokon.——–Kokko will gather the whole bonfire
For those having trouble parsing Sandra’s…
“Wouldn’t the sentence, ‘I want to put a hyphen between the words “Fish” and “and” and “and” and “Chips” in my Fish-and-Chips sign’ have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before ‘Fish’, and 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’?”
The joke is that both are grammatically correct sentences, and Woo thought he was going to confuse Sandra, but he got one-upped by her.
Buffalo is an adjective, a noun, and a verb. The city, the bison, and to bully.
Buffalo (a.) buffalo (n.) Buffalo (a.) buffalo (n.) buffalo (v.), buffalo (v.) Buffalo (a.) buffalo (n.).
Essentially, it means this: “New York bison New York bison bully, bully New York bison”
However, Sandra, privy to this, is using the word and to describe groups that include the word “and” to trick Woo back.
First part: FISH and AND, and AND and CHIPS.
Second part (refers to the above ands):
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.@ Required:
The hell?
duhhh…. wa?
@ GreatLimmick:
Thank you!
Still got a headache though…
I literally had no idea until today that “buffalo” was used as a verb by some people.
@ Xezlec:
To clarify, for anyone still having trouble:
Buffalo buffalo that Buffalo buffalo buffalo actually themselves buffalo other Buffalo buffalo.
Or rather,
Buffalo from Buffalo that buffalo from Buffalo do routinely buffalo actually themselves buffalo other buffalo from Buffalo.
And that word has officially lost all meaning.
This all is too much for my tiny mind.
nice to see Sandra again, seems like months.
Oh, wait.
English can be confusing, but Chinese can be far worse.
Case in point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
After reading the buffalo link, I was able to make sense out of Sandra’s sentence. It relies on the idea that “and and and” means “and as well as and.” Note the use of commas, if it helps.
Heck, even a supposedly ambiguity-free language isn’t immune:
mi viska mi vi skami viska (I see myself where there are computer-watchers.)
People, be sure to read the description:
Maybe this is a hint on one of the ciphers used for the Seeoahtlahmakaskay challenge:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gardner#Recreational_mathematics
An explanation of Sandra’s sentence, for those who don’t want to leave the comments section. 🙂
First, one must parse the part in quotation marks:
This is relatively simple: Sandra (or the original sentence-maker) is explaining a desire to place hyphens between the word “Fish” and the word “and“, and then between the word “and” and the word “Chips”.
However, this is not the actual question being asked. Rather, Sandra is now trying to punctuate the sentence previously mentioned – namely, to add quotation marks in order to clarify which “ands” are functional and which are the words being discussed. Therefore, she asks if she should have put quotation marks before “Fish”:
then between the word “Fish” and the word “and“:
and then between the word “and” and the word “and“:
and, again, between the same “and” and the next “and“:
… and so on, until the positions of the quotation marks have been explained in a manner not quite designed to fully clarify them.
Hopefully that helps someone to puzzle it out.
I think I broke something…
…So why does the Fish-and-chips sign have two “ands” in it?
I just remembered – Sandra and Woo is not originally english but german.
So I looked up the german page and found that instead of the buffalo sentence Woo said “Weichen Weichen weichen Weichen, weichen Weichen weichen Weichen.” which when I used google translate turned out to mean “Crossover soft soft soft soft soft soft.”
…
I think something got lost in the translation – would anyone care to give it a non-automated attempt?
But wait! In her sentence and this current sentence, it would be much clearer if we put quotation marks before fish and between fish and and, and and and and, and and and and, and and and and… (Ad infinitum)
hi132435 wrote:
I shall attempt to expand upon the first sentence for added clarity:
“I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and and , and the words and and Chips in my Fish-and-Chips sign”
well, give Woo a break
After all, it’s not his native language
First panel is basically how the my previous boy scout ‘buffalo patrol’ shouted. Only with a lot more vigor
@ ░▒▓█│Walkman│█▓▒░:
Germany is GMT+2 during daylight saving time, in winter (and officially) GMT+1.
Start with “Fish And Chips”. Convert to 1 2 3.
1 = Fish, 2 = And, 3 = Chips
Now talk about hyphenation; there are two places to hyphenate: (between 1 and 2) and (between 2 and 3).
Now talk about quotation marks. Pick up all the words and convert them to A B C D E F G.
A = 1, B = and, C = 2, D = and, E = 2, F = and, G = 3.
before A, and between A and B, and B and C, and C and D, and D and E, and E and F, and F and G, as well as after G.
B, C, D, E, and F are all “and”.
Woo:
Buffalo(city) buffalo(animal) Buffalo(city) buffalo(bully of confuse) buffalo(bully or confuse) Buffalo(city) buffalo(animal).
This means that the animal from the city, who are bullied or confused by animals from the city, happen to bully or confuse other animals from the city.
This explains it better.(3:30)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hup_8uDXJx8
Sandra:
Wouldn’t the sentence “I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and(1) and(2) and(3) and(4) and(5) Chips in my Fish-and(2,4)-Chips sign” have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and(1), and and(1) and and(2), and and(2) and and(3), and and(3) and and(4), and and(4) and and(5), and and(5) and Chips, as well as after Chips?
The intended sentence implied:
I want to put a hyphen between the words “Fish” and “and” and “and” and “Chips” in my Fish-and-Chips sign. Note the quotation marks.
ugh, I hate these. English is not my first language so my brain simply unable to properly process these not matter how much I try.
And. Done.
@ ░▒▓█│Walkman│█▓▒░:
Not first, but close.
@ ░▒▓█│Walkman│█▓▒░:
“first”? Really? I didn’t know people above 6 still did that?