The Perfect Sentence... Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
There are many great sentences. I mean we humans have really created some pretty good ones. But no sentence can match the sheer silliness and untouchable greatness of the English language’s perfect sentence. This sentence is, of course: ““Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
How could this be? How could a sentence be so perfect?
Well, to understand how in the world this sentence makes any sense, we’ll have to break down the types of buffalo used. Believe it or not, the eight instances of “Buffalo” used in the sentence are a combination of only three words. The first buffalo is of course the fluffy bovine undulate we know also as the American bison. The second buffalo isn’t quite as common. It’s a verb meaning to “outwit” or “deceive.” The final usage is the proper noun Buffalo, which is a cold city in upper New York, who appropriately enough have a sports team with buffalo for their mascot.
Okay, so having these three words identified is helpful but the sentence is still word spaghetti. Look at the parse tree. Helpful? Didn’t think so. What about the Reed-Kellogg diagram for the sentence? Okay, not so clear either.
Let’s break it down first by providing a rough sketch of what’s even being said with the sentence. Basically, the sentence is about American bison from the city of Buffalo who deceive and outwit other bison from the same city. The sentence could be read as “Buffalo from the city of Buffalo, outwit (or buffalo) other buffalo from Buffalo, who they themselves also outwit other buffalo from the city of Buffalo.”
Reduce some of the words you get, “Buffalo buffalo who are buffaloed by Buffalo buffalo, also buffalo (outwit) buffalo (bison) from Buffalo.” One more reduction and you get: “Buffalo buffalo, Buffalo buffalo buffalo, buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
Wikipedia is kind enough to graph out the sentence for us. As you can see, the red lines represent the act of “buffaloing.” In the left-most case, a group of Rochester Buffalo are buffaloing some buffalo, as Rochester buffalo do. However, inside our yellow, blue and green areas we see the Buffalo buffalos from our favorite buffalo sentence. Now an important note here, is that “As soon as a Buffalo buffalo is buffaloed, they move into the blue area.” Of course, if they happen to be being buffaloed by a Buffalo buffalo, they would be in the green area.
Color-coded, the sentence reads:“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
Technically, you can do this to other words that share a collective noun, adjective and a verb, like Police. Which is a verb for policing or patrolling. A noun for someone who does that. And is a proper noun for the city of Police, Poland. Police police Police police police police Police police. Or, in less scary terms, “Cops from Police, Poland, whom cops from Poland patrol, patrol cops from Poland.”
But maybe Ice Cube had it right. F the police. We all know the buffalo sentence is better.
0:00 Introduction
0:50 Types of Buffalo
2:40 Wikipedia's Brilliant Breakdown