There, there! They're there, their children are there.

Today, I'd like to talk about a couple of confusing sentences.  Most of the material herein is not my original material, but I'd like to put my spin on it and expose it to a broader audience.  The 4 of you who read this being my broader audience, of course.

Have you ever gotten a text message like this: "i'm heading they're right now," and then fought every urge to reply - as Ross did to Rachel - that T-H-E-Y apostrophe R-E means "they are."  T-H-E-R-E means "there!"  Or maybe you didn't fight the urge.  How'd that work out for you?  What awful judgments will be lying in wait for the sender of this sentence to your pocket communicator: "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo."?  Not so fast, because...

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is actually a grammatically correct sentence.  So, too, is "Smelt smelt smelt smelt smelt smelt smelt smelt."  How?  Let's start with the buffaloes.  "Buffalo" is being used in 3 different senses here.

     1) Buffalo  =  proper noun,   a city in new york
     2) buffalo  =  noun,               a bison
     3) buffalo  =  verb,                to bully

One note before we begin to analyze this sentence - the proper noun "Buffalo" is being used as an adjective here.  It modifies the noun buffalo (a bison) to describe where that bison is from. 

The sentence could stand some punctuation to be more easily read.  Let's supply that now.  Buffalo buffalo, Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.  Got it?  Not yet?  One thing that helps to keep yourself from getting lost in the puddle of buffaloes is to use the capitalized Buffaloes as cues to the rest of the sentence.  And, to make it more explicit, let's substitute the alternate meanings for the words: Buffalo bison, Buffalo bison bully, bully Buffalo bison.  Meaning ultimately that bison from Buffalo who are bullied by other bison from Buffalo, themselves also bully bison from Buffalo.  The sentence is grammatically identical to this sentence about dogs who are chased by cats, but who also chase those very cats:  Stray dogs, stray cats chase, chase stray cats.

Smelt smelt, smelt smelt smelt, smelt smelt smelt works similarly.  Smelt is being used 3 ways here as well.

     1) smelt  =  noun,         a type of fish
     2) smelt  =  verb,          past tense of smell
     3) smelt  =  adjective,   the quality of having been smelled

For more exotic fare, let's ponder this nugget of encephalopathy-inducing grammar.  The following sentence (while needing punctuation) is grammatically correct:  James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher.  Punctuated, to enlighten us as to its meaning, it now reads: James, while John had had "had," had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.  Yes, that's 11 hads in a row!

It appears James and John had had a little writing contest.  Each, at a key point in their essays, had a choice to make.  To use "had" or "had had."  Because there is some ambiguity in English over which to choose (if you had something in the past, but no longer have it does that mean you had had it?) both James and John took an existential leap and followed their hearts.  John chose "had."  James chose to write "had had."  James, it seems, won the day and the teacher's affections, as "had had" had had a better effect on her.  Now, don't even get me started on the difference between "affect" and "effect."

After borrowing from others for the above illustrations, I now leave you with this comforting thought below of my own creation, gleaned from my title above, which I enjoy because it has 3 consecutive homophones of "there" and 5 overall uses of it in a row, without being too confusing, as this run-on sentence has grown to be.


"There, there! They're there, their children are there, and their parents are there.


For more fun with sentences like these, check out this wikipedia page which contains one of my favorites:
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?

Who's your name?

My first post is inspired by the family of a friend of mine, who have an unusually high density of names that are also words.  Let me explain.  My friend's name is Kurt.  Curt means "rudely brief in speech or abrupt in manner."  So Kurt's name is also a word.  Curt.  You see where I'm going with this.  The name doesn't have to be spelled exactly like the word, but it does have to at least be a homophone.  As another example, Kurt's sister is Laci.  Lacy, obviously meaning, pertaining to or resembling lace.  See, nothing too hard yet.

Here's where things get interesting.  Laci married Jordan.  Whoa! you say.  Jordan isn't a word!  Unless you're gonna count proper nouns or river names!  Well, that's where you're wrong.  I won't be counting proper nouns and the like, but if you keep yelling at me and ending your sentences with exclamation points, I might just dump my jordan (a portable container for urine, used in bedrooms) on you.  The one major design flaw is that it's a lacy jordan, so it typically just leaks everywhere.

Continuing, Laci and Jordan have a daughter named Abby.  An abbey, as you probably know, being a monastery or convent.  And we haven't even gotten to where this all started, Kurt's parents Barney and Pansy.  Take your pick with pansy.  I'll give you either "a flower of the violet family" or "a weak or cowardly man," depending on your disposition.  Barney, though, is an interesting one.  You've got choices with barney, too.  It can either mean "an argument or brawl" or "a small locomotive used for mining."  Do you think two miners have ever been involved in a barney while riding on a barney?  By the way, you can file that one in sentences that haven't ever been uttered before.

I guess that would make Kurt's brother Jason the black sheep of the family, with no words attached to his name.  To make up for this, Jason had to have children of his own.  After conceiving a baby daughter, he named his progeny Siena.  Spelled with two N's, sienna can refer to either a yellowish-brown or reddish-brown pigment.  And not be outdone, Kurt - following in the familial tradition - named his daughter not only a word, but a color as well, when he introduced baby Scarlett into the world 16 months ago.

To summarize the vocabulary we've learned here today, I present you with the following sentence you can study at your leisure:
Jason, touring a sienna-tinged mine underneath an abbey's pansy garden, became upset at the miner's curt tone, and got his revenge by dumping a lacy jordan on top of the scarlet barney the miner was riding in.


If you've enjoyed this post, feel free to take a vocabulary quiz I created at dictionary.com, using the 50 most popular baby names of 2010.  The link is here: http://dynamo.dictionary.com/217469/names-that-are-also-tricky-words.  The quiz was created using dictionary.com's Word Dynamo tool, which is pretty cool.  You can just take quizzes other people have created, or make your own and study words that you've learned recently.  Word Dynamo will even estimate the total number of English words you know based on your performance on their quizzes.  (I'm up to 57,134).  I just went through a massive undertaking and compiled quizzes of every word I learned in 2011.  You can search for them at Word Dynamo by just typing "Words I Learned in 2011" into the search bar.  There's 20-something volumes of them, which should keep you busy for far longer than you care to be.

Let me know how you do on the quizzes if you care to take any of them.
And are there any members of your family that have names that are unusual words, like barney or jordan?

Bringing you the choicest morsels of wordplay and vocabulary that I have yet mustered.