One-Note Sentences
Monotonous conversation from around the world:
Finnish:
Etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät.
“The searching detectives are searching the searching detectives.”
Spanish:
¿Cómo como? ¿Cómo cómo como? Como como como.
“How do I eat? What do you mean, how do I eat? I eat how I eat.”
Icelandic:
Ái á Á á á í á.
“A farmer named Ái, who lives on a farm by the name of Á, owns a female sheep that is in a river.”
Malay:
Sayang, sayang sayang sayang, sayang sayang sayang?
“Darling, I love you, dear, do you love me?”
Romanian:
Stanca sta-n castan ca Stan.
“Stanca stood in a chestnut tree like Stan.”
Hungarian:
A követ követ követ.
“The envoy follows a stone.”
Tagalog:
Bababa ba? Bababa!
“Going down? It is!”
In a Word
oscitant
adj. drowsy or inattentive
Sum Caws
The Russian for crow (a bird) in the genitive case plural is sorok. The same word also means forty. Hence, the ambiguous construction ‘100 crows + 100 crows = 200 crows’ can also mean ‘140 + 140 = 280.’
– V.M. Bradis, Lapses in Mathematical Reasoning, 1938
Jabberwocky Spell-Checked
`Twas billing, and the smithy toes
Did gyre and gamble in the wage:
All missy were the brogues,
And the mime rats outrage.
“Beware the Jabber Wick, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jujube bird, and shun
The furious Bender Snatch!”
He took his viral sword in hand:
Long time the Manxwomen foe he sought –
So rested he by the Tutu tree,
And stood awhile in thought.
And, as in offish thought he stood,
The Jabber Wick, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffing through the tulle wood,
And burbled as it came!
One, two! One, two! And through and through
The viral blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.
“And, has thou slain the Jabber Wick?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O crablouse day! Callow! Allay!’
He chortled in his joy.
`Twas billing, and the smithy toes
Did gyre and gamble in the wage;
All missy were the brogues
And the mime rats outrage.
Tarzan Down
Where do SWINGER and PYGMIES have the same meaning?
On a telephone keypad.
In a Word
novercal
adj. like a stepmother
materteral
adj. suggestive of an aunt
By the Way
Shouldn’t ENCOURAGE rhyme with ENTOURAGE?
Able Was I
One French Republican, by writing and analyzing, has produced the following:–
Which, being arranged in the form of a sentence, gives, ‘Napoleon on o leon leon eon apoleon poleon‘–which is the Greek for ‘Napoleon, being the lion of the people, was marching on, destroying the cities!‘
– Appleton Morgan, Macaronic Poetry, 1872
In a Word
pauciloquent
adj. uttering few words
Sound Sense
A favorite kind of school-boy humor is that which takes the form of evolving sentences like the following: Forte dux fel flat in gutture, which is good Latin for ‘By chance the leader inhales poison in his throat,’ but which read off rapidly sounds like the English ‘Forty ducks fell flat in the gutter.’ A French example is Pas de lieu Rhône que nous, which it is hardly necessary to explain makes no sense in French at all, though every word be true Gallic, but by a similar process of reading reveals the proverbial advice, ‘Paddle your own canoe.’
– William Shepard Walsh, Handy-Book of Literary Curiosities, 1909
See also Franglish and “It Means Just What I Choose It to Mean.”
