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Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

October 30, 2010

Did you know that Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is a grammatically correct sentence?

“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” is a grammatically valid sentence in the English language, used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs. It has been discussed in literature since 1972 when the sentence was used by William J. Rapaport, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo. It was posted to Linguist List by Rapaport in 1992. It was also featured in Steven Pinker’s 1994 book The Language Instinct.

via Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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How Many Words Did Shakespeare Know?

October 17, 2010

Here is an interesting piece on how two statisticians estimated how many words William Shakespeare may have known.

This argument was repeated with a third, fourth, fifth sample, and so on. Each sample corresponds to discovering a new and different complete works of Shakespeare. For each sample, it is possible to estimate the number of new words that appear that have not appeared before. With each new sample, the number of new words decreases, but the total number of words used increases. Eventually, given enough samples, the number of new words approaches about 35,000. This means that in addition the 31,534 words that Shakespeare knew and used, there were approximately 35,000 words that he knew but didn’t use. Thus, we can estimate that Shakespeare knew approximately 66,534 words.

source

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What Does ‘Manila’ in Manila Folder Stand For?

Manila folders where originally constructed with the material known as Manila Hemp, a type of fiber that comes from the leaves of the abacá tree.  Manila Hemp gets its name from the capital of the Philippines, which happens to be one of the largest growers of the abacá tree. [From Wikipedia]

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The Origin of Common Phrases

Have you ever wanted to know the origin of those common phrases you hear?  mental_floss has an article detailing the origin and meaning of some odd everyday phrases. “To skin a cat” doesn’t actually mean a feline. It means a catfish – the skins of catfish are notoriously tough and hard to remove for cooking. [...]

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Running Defined

“Running is by definition the fastest means for an animal to move on foot.  It is defined in sporting terms as a gait in which at some point all feet are off the ground at the same time. It is a form of aerobic exercise.” [read more]

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Kinboshi

From wikipedia.org “Kinboshi, literally meaning gold star, is a term used in professional sumo wrestling to describe a maegashira victory over a yokozuna.” [read more]

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What’s a Backronym?

“A backronym (or bacronym) is a phrase that is constructed “after the fact” from a previously existing word or abbreviation, the abbreviation being an initialism or an acronym. Backronyms may be invented with humorous intent, or may be a type of false or folk etymology.” [Wikipedia]

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Africa’s Languages

“The continent of Africa contains over one thousand languages (some have estimated over two thousand), with four major language families native to Africa.” Language groups: Afro-Asiatic languages Nilo-Saharan languages Niger-Congo languages Khoisan languages Non-African language families Creole languages Unclassified languages Sign languages [wikipedia 1] [wikipedia 2]

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