THE WEB PAGE OF
Sentences up with which we find it amusing to put.
Cautionary
Comments:
Sources are (usually) not quoted. Some are worth ferreting
out. The title of this page is a case in point.
The target language is (standard
(see below). In case of doubt check with your (friendly)
local (neighborhood-) American.
Errors in any language (including my own) are par for the
course and are carefully hidden.
Other phrases are admittedly completely incomprehensible to
even native speakers unless they know the 'joke'. An example
is the Dutch 'graven' sentence. As an amusing variation, the
Italian “archbishopric” phrase is essentially
unpronounceable even to native speakers who read it slowly
off the screen.
The title of this page comes
from a quote attributed to (though this is disputed)
Churchill.
"Ending a sentence with a proposition is something up with which I will not put."
More recently, I found the
following amusing sentence in a novel ("Seven Eves").
"There was no paper and no ink to write on it with."
(Complaint
of a fish and chips store owner, who has the store's sign painted.)
I
don't like it: you didn't leave enough space between fish and and and and
and chips.
(Complaint of a child whose mother reads
to her every night.)
What did you bring this book
that I don't want to be read
to out of up for against my will.
(A
true sentence that cannot be truly written:)
Two has 3 meanings in the English language.
(A
true sentence that cannot be truly said:)
There is clearly no cause for confusion between to, too, and two.
(And
therefore, of course, we have a true sentence that cannot be
truly said or written:)
Two has 3 meanings in the English language, and there is clearly no cause for confusion between to, too, and two.
Ob man
ueber Unterammergau
oder aber
ueber Oberammergau faehrt, ist
ja ganz
egal.
Als
hinter Fliegen Fliegen
fliegen, fliegen
Fliegen Fliegen
nach.
(If you understood the
Fliegen sentence and still feel lucky try the
following three sentences.)
Wenn Grillen Grillen
Grillen grillen,
grillen Grillen
Grillen Grillen.
Als in Graven
graven gravengraven
graven, graven graven Gravener gravengraven.
Toen zagen zagen
zagen zagen
zagen, zagen
zagen zagen
zagen zagen.
(Here is one that is
nearly impossible to say:)
Fischers
Fritz fischt frische Fische,
frische Fische
fischt Fischers
Fritz.
(Husband,
wife, three children. Children
want to camp out in the tent.)
Mother:
Let us forget the tent! Father: Yes, let
us four get the tent!
(On a different tack, here
are two sentences about knowing and knowledge. They
are not all supposed to be
funny; they were written by
So there is no point in anyone trying to learn from me
what I know
I do not know -- unless,
perhaps, he wants to know how not to know
what, as he ought to know,
no one can know.
If they say, 'What if you are mistaken?' -- well, if I am mistaken,
I am. For, if one
does not exist, he can by no means be mistaken.
Therefore,
I am, if
I am mistaken that I am, since it is certain that
I am, if I am
mistaken. And because, if I could be mistaken, I would
have to be the one who is
mistaken, therefore, I am most certainly
not mistaken in knowing
that I am. Nor, as a consequence, am I
mistaken in knowing that I
know. For, just as I know that I am, I
also know that I know.
(Here
are three palindromes.)
Was it a bar or a bat I saw.
Dábale arroz a la zorra el abad.
Doc, note, I dissent. A fast
never prevents a fatness. I diet
on cod.
(How about some graffiti? Here is what someone wrote on
a holder of paper toilet
seat covers:)
Republican Life Vests.
English
is very rich in words for groupings (nouns of assembly).
Here are a number of them.
I leave out the
exclusively generic ones such 'set' or 'group'. The generic
ones include wonderful
words like 'scad' (and its plural). This may once have had a
specific connotation, but its origin
is unknown and it (now) only has its generic meaning. I also
leave out all words that have their
origin in number or weight ('dozens', 'tons'). In fact
almost all of the following
words have in common that
they are used primarily but not only in a very specific
context.
Do you
know each of the following
contexts? For example: A 'round of drinks', a 'cluster of
stars',
a 'colony of termites', an
'episode of sparrows', an 'unkindness of ravens', a 'raft of
products',
a 'shock of hair', a 'den
of cub scouts', a 'span of time', a 'remuda
of horses',
a 'setting of wares', a
'mob of kangaroos' (from Australia), a 'bevy of larks' (or
quail),
a 'charm of hummingbirds', a 'gaze of raccoons', a 'string
of ponies', a 'congregation
of alligators', a `crash of rhinos', etc.
Words like 'brace' and 'cord' are not included since they imply a fixed quantity-- 2 in the first
case and 4x4x8 foot in the second. I included 'batch', since
it has one specific non-generic usage,
namely 'a batch of cows'. Similarly for 'book': 'a book of
matches'. Some have more than one
preferred specific usage: 'a skein
of thread', 'a skein of geese'. Or try this: a 'flight of
birds'
and a 'flight of locks'.
is therefore a 'school' without the purpose.
A 'peal of bells' means a set of bells as found in a church
tower (related to 'appeal < appel
(fr.)').
The sound of laughter (a peal of
laughter) is derived from this.
A 'lashing' comes from something you bind together (to
lash). However, in the old days a lashing
meant a whipping,
A 'welter' is from old Indo-European stock and has to do
with generally round things
(apparently
'valley' and 'revolve' are words related to it).
generally heavy things. 'Gobs' is of Celtic origin and originally meant a
mouthful.
of Celtic origin and one of unknown origin have not made the
cut as being too generic: 'slew'
(or 'slue', but not,apparently, 'slough') and 'oodles'.
'Onslaught' is a borderline case. It is of Dutch origin ('aanslag' = 'attack') and means an
overwhelming outpouring.
In one of his novels Gore Vidal
uses the beautiful phrasing 'a raft of royalty' for some of
the
guests at a very uppity party.
James Lipton wrote a book called 'An Exaltation
of Larks' which contains many more examples
of these words than we can list here.
Covey, coven, episode, dollop, pinch, stack, gaggle,
bevy, herd, flock, grove, flight, wing, span,
tribe, clan, synod, fleet,
flotilla, squadron, squad, troop, swarm, army, flurry,
barrage, deck,
bolt, cluster, galaxy, pack,
congregation, crash, pride, string, pod, school, bed, round,
colony,
pile, crock, murder, raft, wad, heap, larder,
clutch, convoy, ream, retinue, batch, confederacy,
bullpen, hutch, mob, droves,
posse, gang, band, hood,
shock, parliament, unkindness, den, setting,
remuda, brood, copse, cabal, batch, book,
skein, quiver, pencil, passel, shoal, peal, spate,
smattering,
clowder,
gobs, onslaught, clowder,
exaltation, detail, bouquet, posy.
(Polite French for when you bump someone in the Parisian metro.)
A: 'Faux pas!'
B: 'Pas de deux.'
(French Vocabulary no-one Believes. Try to say it with a French accent.)
Le Vasistdas
(Six infinitives in succession)
Ik zou jou wel
eens willen hebben
blijven zien
staan kijken tot
het conflict een einde nam.
(If you think Italian is operatic and easy, try this tongue twister = 'sciolilingua'.)
Se
l'Arcivescovo di Constantinopoli si volesse
disarcivescovisconstantinopolizzare, vi
disarcivescovisconstantinopolizzereste voi per non fare
disarcivescovisconstantinopolizzare lui?
(Here are two others that are popular, especially with children.)
Trentatre Trentini entrarono a Trento
tutti e trentatre trotterellando.
Sopra la
panca la capra campa. Sotto la panca la capra crepa.
(Sound differences are an unending source
of marvel. Subtle sound
differences give rise to
interesting minimal pairs or words which differ in only one
phonological element. These are
not always distinguishable by non-native speakers. These
pairs are from Italian. They differ
only by the length of the consonants in the
middle in the first case, and by the open-closed
distinction of the vowel 'e' in the second. In W. European
languages 'open'-ness is
indicated
by a `-accent and ‘closed’-ness
by a ´-accent on the relevant vowel.)
pala = spade
and palla = ball
pèsca = peach
and pésca = fishing
(On the same subject as before, I cannot help but
mention that Portuguese has one of the most
complex sound systems of the W. European languages. As a
result it is capable of making remarkable
distinctions with truly subtle means --- note though that
there are large differences between
Brazilian and European Portuguese. The first distinction in
the word pairs that follow is so subtle as
to be nearly impossible to recognize: the stress falls on
the same syllable, but the accent in the
second word that its sound is slightly more open than that
of the first. The second pair is a clearer
open-closed distinction. The third is also open-closed, but
not as easy to hear. In the fourth pair,
the first is slightly more open. In the last pair, I think,
the second consonant is slightly more
closed and slightly longer. (They both sound like
diphthongs.) The differences in the last two
pairs of words I’ll leave as home work.)
pensamos = we think
and pensámos = we thought
avó = grandmother and
avô
= grandfather
sé = seat
(of bishopry)
and sê = be!
(imperative)
sóis = suns and
sois
= you (pl) are
tem = (s)he
has and têm = they
have
vem = (s)he
comes and veem = they
come
colher = fork
and colher = to harvest, (also various
conjugated forms of this verb)
(Here
are a few bloopers that are probably only interesting to
mathematicians who grade homework.
The first of these translates literally into some other
languages such as Italian.)
The compliment of a set.
A bijection is a map that is both invective and subjective.
(Words in the English language of unexpected Dutch origin.)
pickle <-- pekel
(In fact, even an idiom involving this word was taken from Dutch:)
in a pickle <-- iemand in de pekel laten zitten
onslaught <-- aanslag
How are cows opposite to fish?
One has a plural that has no letters in common with its
singular and the other has a plural
identical to its singular.
fish --> fish
cow --> kine
or: quail --> quails ?
It turns out that both are
possible according to this website:
http://www.mcwdn.org/grammar/irregular.html
(Words that can mean their own
opposite. the first case is beautiful: essentially the only
two
meanings of 'cleave' are each others opposite. The second word
already has other primary
meanings. See
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/antagonym.html.)
to cleave --> 'cleave to your principle' and 'this issue will cleave the party'.
to buck --> 'bucking the trend' and 'bucking for promotion'.
oversight --> 'carelessness' and 'controlled care'.
reservation --> 'uncertainty' and 'certainty of
availability (of a ticket)'.
sanction -->
'to encourage authoritatively' and 'to deter by punishment'.
inscient -->
'ignorant' and 'insightful'.
to dust
--> 'to remove dust from' and 'to put dust on'.
to trim
--> 'to cut something away' and 'to add something as an
ornament'.
liege --> 'a lord to whom allegiance is due'
and 'a subject owing allegiance'. (Also
as adj.)
to cover
--> 'this material is covered in the lecture' (shown) and
'the painting has been covered' (hidden).
to uncover
--> 'to make visible' and 'to leave out: this material is
usually left uncovered by traditional courses'.
You have failed me -->
as in: 'This exam was easy; you should have done well,
but…' and 'Almost all my answers on the exam were correct,
nonetheless …'.
to visit --> Possibly
controversial: 'I'll visit my family in Holland next summer' as
opposed to 'I'll visit a curse on X' (I will not go
there) .
invaluable
--> 'priceless' (sic)???
Here is something related in
the English language I ran into unexpectedly.
It is the obverse of previous entry:
Words that are grammatically each others' opposite, but
(can) convey the same notion.
The first is 'the' standard example of this phenomenon
The pair ingenious & ingenuous is a 'quasi-antagonym': ‘clever’ or
‘cunning’ on the one hand and
‘lacking in cunning’ on the other. Chymsko called
this a quantagonym,
and made this the
foundation
of a transformational theory based on the smallest changes
that radically change the meaning of a phrase.
(Our favorite book title.)
'Let Stalk Strine'
by Afferbeck Lauder.
(In reading a text we look for higher level units than
letters.
To show that, note how hard it is --- for native
speakers of English---
to count the number of f’s in the following sentence.)
Finished files are the
result of years of scientific study combined with the
experience of years.
(What is the mysterious geographic connection between
as an old name for a nation
in what is now (Caucasian)
(A beautiful category of
entries is ‘they do not say what you think they say’. Here
is an Italian
example, where they do absolutely not say that their bimbo is held captive in
the asylum.)
Il mio bimbo è stato cattivo nell'asilo = My child behaved badly in
kindergarten
(Related to these are entries where ‘they don’t say
what say others think they say’.
To limit this a bit, let’s
stick to phrases or words that have (nearly) opposite meanings in different
languages. Compare also with the earlier ‘opposite
meanings’ in English entry, which of course is a
much harder category.)
Exquisito (Sp) =
out of the ordinary and good
Exquisito (Port) =
out of ordinary and bad; worse than strange.
(Things you wouldn’t believe could happen in your own
language. In Portuguese
infinitives (ie: “to go”)
are very often conjugated. In Italian consonants
such as 'b', 'p', 'v', 'm', 'n', 'z', 's', and so on
are routinely doubled with marked consequences (in the
middle and south of the country) for the
pronunciation. In Spanish interrogative and exclamatory
sentences are marked by punctuation signs
both at the beginning and
the end of the sentence. In Romanian and Danish the definite
article
“the” comes after the noun. In
Russian and Greek all verbs have two (often completely
different)
forms according to whether the action the verb represents either has a distinct finality,
purpose,
or place of arrival, or on the other
hand lacks such a finality. In
English, 'going to friend’s house'
or 'walking around through the park' gives an idea of this
difference in ‘aspect’.)
The modern Romance languages consist of
various 'national' languages such as Italian, French,
Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian. Linguists consider many
'subnational' languages, such as
Occitan, Catalan, Neapolitan, Sicilian, Galician, Ladino,
and so on, as separate languages (See 'Ethnologue').
While all of these languages have a
documented common root, they are not necessarily mutually
comprehensible. It in fact depends. If you are from Galicia,
you obviously speak 'Gallego',
but you will also be completely comfortable in both Spanish
and Portuguese.
However, a native of Lisbon and one of Madrid, if we assume
no linguistic education, are much more
likely to converse in English than Portuguese or Spanish.
(The same applies on a much larger scale in
South America.) Nonetheless the similarities between all of
these languages are striking.
In spite of popular belief, these
languages are not the direct
inheritors of classical Latin, but
rather of the version of that language spoken by the
“ordinary” people, namely 'vulgar Latin'. Vulgar
in this instance refers to the language of the common people
and not to dirty jokes. In this language
the complicated system of cases, with which literary
classical Latin was riddled, ended up essentially
simplified to two cases: one was the nominative, and the
second was a catch-all for all the other
cases of classical (literary) Latin. It was represented by
what used to be accusative. Possibly this
meant that words were most commonly used in the (ancient)
accusative, because most Romance nouns
assumed a form that appears to come from the accusative of
literary Latin and not the nominative.
All other cases were largely lost. That development together
with the loss of the final 'm' sound
in
late classical Latin were apparently decisive in the
formation of nouns in the Romance languages. A
good example of this is that Latin '(nom) pater - (acc) patrem'
became 'padre' in Spanish and
Italian, 'père' in French.
As the example of 'father' above
indicates, there were local variations as well. We ended up
with
not a single 'Neo Vulgar Latin' language, but a slew of them
(i.e.: Spanish, Portuguese, French, etc).
There are many details to that story as well. One aspect
that comes up in the 'father' example
is the difference in 'palatalization', that is the
'softening' of the pronunciation of a word
to accommodate the lazy palate. According to the above
scheme Romance could have stuck with
'patre' for father. However, that word makes the tongue work
harder than 'padre' (Sp+It).
Thence it is one one more step to drop the 'd' sound
altogether. Hence the French 'père'.
Yet another clue to the origins of
the Romance languages is that the vocabulary does not at all
correspond to that of classical (literary) Latin, but rather
to a colloquial/evolved version of it:
'casa', which occurs in practically all Romance languages,
does not of course derive from “domus”,
but is related to the more colloquial 'casa (lat.)' = 'hut'.
While 'domus' took over the role
of
'house of god', as in 'duomo
(It.)', 'dom (Ger.)', in the common language of
the impoverished
latin(ized) people after the fall of
Vulgar Latin
was never documented very well, because Latin remained the
literary language in
which intellectuals tended to write. Nonetheless the list
of examples of the kind given here is
endless, and can easily be accessed through all manner of
websources.
Quotes on Cities:
(The following quote (by Renato Fucini) can be found on a plaque
in Amalfi. The statement is probably true.)
'Il giorno del giudizio, per gli
Amalfitani che
andranno in paradiso,
sarà un
giorno come tutti gli altri.'
(The following is just as
true (by Francisco de Icaza), you can find it on a plaque in
'Dale limosna,
mujer, que
no hay nada en la vida como la pena
de ser ciego en Granada.'
Yogi Berra was a baseball
player with the New York Yankees in the 1950's.
He was famous for his colorful phrases, sometimes called
Yogiisms.
The following quotes are taken from wikipedia:
'Nobody goes [to that restaurant]
anymore, it's too crowded.'
'Baseball is 90%
mental. The other half is physical'.
On explaining how to
find his house:
'When you come to a
fork in the road, take it.'
'Always go to other
people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours.'
'I really didn't say
everything I said.'
'Pair up in threes.'
'We were overwhelming underdogs.'
'The future ain't what it used to be.'
'If you don't know where you're going, you might wind up
somewhere else.'
'It gets late early out there.'
This is from the `typo's in
faculty meeting memoranda' series.
This phrase is meant to recommend a proposal by Prof X to
extend the material of a certain course (note the extra 's'
though):
'Let's
teach this ass a lesson.'
This one explains an
issue of confidentiality (the 4th word should be
'reveal'):
'I will not revile the name of the colleague who told me
that.'
Brilliant Hyperboles and other Wonderful Phrases.
An uninformed belief has it
that Mathematicians aren't known for eloquence.
On the contrary: they think very hard about the most basic
concepts which include
numbers, shapes, but also that most elemental form of
thought: words.
The Grand Linguistic
Transfer Matrix.
There will always be those people up with whom we have to
put and
whose language is just incomprehensible. To say that they
speak
gobbledygook or gibberish might be impolite. In English we
say that what
they say is 'all Greek to us', or 'double Dutch'. When it is
writing we comment
on, we can say it 'hieroglyphics'. The question is, what do
the Greek and the Dutch
use as metaphors for complicated language? How far does the
chain go to other
languages? Here is a beginning of that study. If you know
more, let me know.
The Comma Syndrome.
A mere comma can change the meaning of statement to its
opposite:
Linguistic wisdom offered by our two little boys.
Daddie, you sleep in the day, because [at night] you watch
too many books.
Do we live in Portland? No dad, we live in Portland State
of America.
Use and abuse of apostrophes.
and one's enemies' enemies also one's friends, and one's
enemies' friends and one's friends' enemies will tend to
become one's enemies."
"Excuse me, why July?"
"What do you mean, why do I lie??"
famous example is the the sound `fish' is spelled as
`ghoti'. We refer
the interested reader to the wikpedia entry `ghoti'.
But consider also
the following vowels.
"Though", "thought", "through", "tour" and "tout".
"Minute"
("maihnute", small; or "minnet" unit of time. Note the
change in emphasis).
"Resent" (sent again; or not liking. Depending on how
you pronounce the "s".)
"Sow" ("sauw", female pig; or "soe" disperse seeds).
"Sew" ("soe", unite with a needle; or "sue", a sewer).
"Bow" ("boe", a curved
object; "bauw", front end of ship).
(Just
to confuse things: "bough"
(tree branch) is also
pronounced as "bauw".)
language that end in "-cion". I think no one will
guess the third.
don't indulge in `writing while you are vacuuming'.
Another Frisian
expression. It literally means "Correct not"
and means something is impossible or wrong. To
great amusement
of the Frisians, Dutch people tend to interpret
this as
"It is barely possible",as in "Can I back up the
car without
hitting anything?", whereupon the car gets
scraped.
"Krekt net."
I will provide the literal translation, and the
meaning where necessary.
"Vechten als leeuwen en beren" To fight like lions
and bears (a lot)
"Als
de kat van huis is, dansen de muizen op tafel"
When the
cat's away, the mice dance on the table.
"Over koetjes
and kalfjes praten" Talk about little cows and calves (to
have light conversation).
"De vogels vallen van het dak" The birds are falling from the roof
(it's a very hot day)
"Je weet nooit hoe een koe een haas vangt" You don't know how a cow catches a
hare (sometimes the unexpected happens)
"Moe als een hond" he mTired as a dog
"Slim als een vos" Clever as a fox
"Dom als een
ezel" Dumb as a donkey