Metro Jacksonville

Quote
"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.[1] It was posted to Linguist List by Rapaport in 1992.[2] It was also featured in Steven Pinker's 1994 book The Language Instinct.[3]

Just a little relief from parking issues, lack of mass transit and politics.

.... just need to add "sucks" to the end of that sentence to complete it..   :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den

QuoteThe Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den (simplified Chinese: 施氏食狮史; traditional Chinese: 施氏食獅史; pinyin: Shī Shì shí shī shǐ) is a famous example of constrained writing by Yuen Ren Chao which consists of 92 characters, all with the sound shi in different tones when read in Mandarin.

Shī Shì shí shī shǐ

    Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
    Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
    Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
    Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
    Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
    Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
    Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
    Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
    Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
    Shì shì shì shì.

OR in english

    « Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »

    In a stone den was a poet called Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten.
    He often went to the market to look for lions.
    At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
    At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
    He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
    He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
    The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
    After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
    When he ate, he realized that these ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
    Try to explain this matter.

Crazy! And Mandarin only has four tones.  Can you imagine what might be done in Cantonese or Vietnamese which have more?

How does a Westerner every learn a tonal language?  Mostly we can't even hear the differences in the tones.

Years ago I tried to learn some Vietnamese so that at least I could be polite.  My efforts made my Vietnamese staff members double over with tears in their eyes they were laughing so hard.  They would never tell me what I really was saying.