Have you ever had a dream that, that, um, that you had, uh, that you had to, you could, you do, you wit, you wa, you could do so, you do you could, you want, you wanted him to do you so much you could do anything?
This one is different if you're reading vs saying it though, I would def emphasize syllables differently for "The old man" (subj) vs "The old" (subj) "man" (verb)
I have zero people, therefore more people have been to Berlin than I have. If I had a sufficient number of people, this sentence could be false. I'd probably need to be a dictator of a medium sized country, but it's possible.
Berlin had 12.4 million visitors in 2025. not all of those will have visited for the first time, but I'd still argue that medium sized won't suffice here.
To say nothing about the fact that there is no time limit on when the person needs to have visited.
Or, the speaker is not a person, and is some kind of plural entity, and the number of their instances that visited Berlin isn't as large as it could be
You've got to be kidding me. I've been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It's just common sense.
Escher sentences are ungrammatical because a matrix clause subject like more people is making a comparison between two sets of individuals, but there is no such set of individuals in the second clause.[5] For the sentence to be grammatical, the subject of the second clause must be a bare plural.[6] Linguists have marked that it is "striking" that, despite the grammar of these sentences not possibly having a meaningful interpretation, people so often report that they sound acceptable,[7] and that it is "remarkable" that people seldom notice any error.[5]
Huh, cool! No I'm being serious. It makes sense to me, even if it isn't grammatical -- i wouldn't notice that it wasn't grammatical except that it was pointed out in the meme.
Maybe how much sense it makes is determined culturally.
If i were trying to remove more ambiguity, i would say, "I have been to Berlin zero times. More people have been to Berlin than I have been."
The last "been" is one of those "assumed" words that linguists talk about people leaving out of sentences.
What are you actually trying to say though? The sentence ostensibly compares two values. "Number of times you've been to Berlin" vs "Amount of people who've been to Berlin". You can't compare those two. As a maths teacher would say, you're mixing your units.
Exactly. It is an ambiguous sentence. The interesting thing for me is how I could read it and not realize it was ambiguous because of my brain trying to fill in the gaps and understand what the other person was trying to say.
If I've never been to Berlin, than the number of people who have been to Berlin is greater than the number of me.
Where P = number of people who have been to Berlin.
Me = number of me, who hasn't been to Berlin = 1
P > 1.
It seems like what you're saying is that this sentence either obvious on its face, because Berlin is a major City that plenty of people have obviously been to, or ambiguous that it is comparing the number of times I've been to Berlin to something undefined. I would agree that on closer inspection, the question is ambiguous!
I would also say that P is also implicitly context dependent, in other undefined ways. Perhaps i mean that there are other people in my situation who have been to Berlin, where i have not.
One underlying assumption I'm discovering through this discussion is that to me, the sentence implies that the speaker has been to Berlin zero times. But on closer inspection, that isn't the only way to read it. In a context where it wasn't clear if the speaker had been to Berlin or not, it would make much less sense.
Have you heard of the book "thinking fast and slow?" by kahneman? I'm not sure how rigorous the science is, but it has other examples of sentences that people will interpret incorrectly if they aren't thinking carefully, because of the way that brains make unconscious assumptions to save energy and try not to think that hard.
Some examples are, "What do Cows drink?" people who have to answer quickly without thought tend to say milk.
Another:
(1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.
You are still leaving words out. Under a standard analysis of English, the full sentence would be:
More people have been to Berlin than I have been to Berlin.
In my judgement as a native English speaker (with an undergraduates degree in linguistics), both that and the original sentence are grammatical. However, it is not obvious to me what they mean.
Looking at it as a linguist, I could hypothesise that the meaning is:
A) The number of people who have been to Berlin is greater than the number of times I have been to Berlin.
Going back to the original sentence, I could also hypothesise (as others in this thread have) that the underlying sentence is
More people have been to Berlin than I have people.
Meaning that I posses a quantity of people, and that quantity is smaller than the quantity of people who have been to Berlin.
Neither of these meanings are intuitive to me (a native speaker), and I would struggle to produce a coherent analysis of either of them. To be clear, that last part is not disqualifing, there are plenty of things in language that have elluded coherent analysis. And many more that have done so from me.
That goes to show how easy it is to leave words out and not realize it!
In my other answer to the post, I try to explain what possible reasons there might be for the sentence making intuitive sense to me, even though I missed all the possible ambiguities until they were pointed out.
It's interpretable that way because it's the only sensible meaning the sentence could have, but grammatically it's pretty much nonsense (the only grammatically correct interpretation I can parse from that is that the speaker owns less people than have been to berlin). It's purely context inference, it could say "more people berlin than I" and you can come up with the same interpretation.
Fwiw I wouldn't reach that one at all, best I could come up with is "I am one person, more than one person has been to berlin, so more people have been to berlin than just me".
In German there is this one poem made of contradictions:
Dunkel war's, der Mond schien helle,
als ein Auto blizeschnelle
langsam um die runde Ecke bog.
Drinnen sassen stehend Leute,
schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft
Small correction (you missed a line and rhyme) plus additional lines. There are variations, I'm just reciting the one I know, as best as I know it.
Dunkel war's, der Mond schien helle,
Schnee lag auf der Sommerflur
als ein Auto blizeschnelle
langsam um die runde Ecke fuhr.
Drinnen sassen stehend Leute,
schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft
Als ein totgeschoss'ner Hase
auf der Sandbank Schlittschuh lief.
Und ein blondgelockter Jüngling
mit kohlrabenschwarzem Haar
saß auf einer grünen Banke,
die rot angestrichen war.
Neben ihm ne alte Schrulle,
die grad siebzehn Jahr alt war,
und sie aß 'ne Butterstulle
die mit Schmalz bestrichen war.
As for a translation, slightly liberal due to missing vocabulary:
It was dark, the moon shone brightly
snow covered the summer meadows
when a car rapidly
slowly rounded the curved corner
Within, people sat standing
in deep, silent conversation,
when a rabit, shot dead,
ice-skated on the sandbank
And a blonde-curled youth
with hair black as a raven
sat on a green bench
which was painted red.
Next to him an old shrew,
who was barely seventeen,
and she ate a buttered bread
with a spread of lard
Oh so it's basically the German version of Two Dead Men.
One fine day in the middle of the night,
two dead men got up to fight,
back to back they face each other,
drew their swords and shot each other,
one blind man to see fair play,
one dumb man to shout hooray
Even if the speakers has been there a million times... The speaker is still a single person, so there will definitely have been more people in Berlin than only the speaker
It was midnight and the sun was shining;
The swallows were grazing, whilst the cows leapt from branch to branch;
An old man, just 14 years old;
Sitting upright on a rounded stone with four corners;
Silent, he said:
“The four greatest prophets were three: Abraham and Jeremiah!”
A non-sequitur just doesn't relate back to the current topic of discussion in any meaningful way.
An Escher sentence, as I understand it, sounds valid but doesn't actually have any real meaning when you actually parse through it. A non-sequitur still has meaning as a sentence, it's just off-topic.
The point of language is to convey meaning. Grammar is less important than what the speaker wants to tell other people.
If this sentence, in context of a larger conversation, has meaning to the people listening to it, then congratulations! Rejoice, for communication has been achieved! Whether it was grammatically correct or not is irrelevant, because the intended target understands.
Language changes over time. Nobody just decided to come up with modern English one day and it caught on, it's a gross pot filled with words and grammar from many other languages (some more melted than others, so not really a melting pot), and mostly filtered from a language nobody speaks anymore.
So having what are essentially arbitrary rules that dictate how things must always be for that language is already pretty dumb to me.
But Escher sentences eschew that, because they are gramatically fine but convey no real meaning. Which is why a paradox like "this sentence is a lie" counts as one. And I like them because escher sentences are a rebel jist like me frfr
Yes but my point is that if it conveys meaning to the intended target, it's irrelevant.
Plenty of sentences, out of context, have no real meaning. The example in OP is one that could have meaning in the right context, which would be understood by its recipient
You're both looking at it from completely different angles.
You're seeing it at a way to criticise someone's grammar; they're looking at it as a puzzle to construct a grammatically correct sentence without imparting any meaning.
This is one of those points that, although correct, is so vague as to be largely pointless unless discussing miscommunication or something of the like. Or are you suggesting we are never allowed to talk about sentence structure or logic again?
Folks that spend time sniping grammatical errors are boring. I'll go out of my way to decipher someone's weird ass sentence structure just so they feel understood. Say your grammatically inccorect Yoda sounding shit to me please.
But it's not sniping grammatical errors, it's constructing a sentence that feels right but is devoid of meaning. This is a puzzle, not someone's embarrassment.
Like most sentences, this sentence has meaning in the right context. For example, imagine I told you beforehand that I owned people. Suddenly there is tons of meaning.
Out of context, most sentences also don't have meaning. The lone sentences we do find meaning in have lots of bagaged context that is just assumed.
108 Comments
TheSlad@sh.itjust.works · 157 pts · 1d
The opposite is "garden path sentences" that seem incorrect or gibberish at first, but then make sense once you've correctly parsed them.
"The old man the boat"
blueduck@piefed.social · 90 pts · 1d
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana
tetris11@feddit.uk · 14 pts · 1d
Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a day, give a man a fish and he'll eat for the rest of his (*stab*) life.
CannonFodder@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 23h
Give a man fire, he'll be warm for a while, set a man on fire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
Natanael@infosec.pub · 2 pts · 19h
Swordfish
loweffortname@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 15h
Teach fish-man...to a life time!
PantaloonMonsoon@sh.itjust.works · 42 pts · 1d
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
flying_wotsit@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 1d
Police police police police police police police police police police.
modus@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 19h
Pig pig pig pig pig pig pig pig pig pig.
lobut@lemmy.ca · 7 pts · 18h
I remember seeing it in school and having it explained to me so many times and my brain just refuses to understand it.
RustyEarthfire@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 15h
Buffalonian bison [that] Buffalonian bison bully [, likewise] bully Buffalonian bison
(Buffalonian is the demonym for residents of Buffalo, NY)
f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 11m
James, while John had had "had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had more approval from the teacher.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 9 pts · 23h
I'm not getting it.
TheSlad@sh.itjust.works · 31 pts · 23h
Elderly people pilot the watercraft
Redjard@reddthat.com · 17 pts · 22h
The seniors crew the ship
BambiDiego@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 13h
Octogenarians command the tide-faring vessel.
morto@piefed.social · 6 pts · 21h
That's the same sentence, but with a hat and monocle
awfulawful@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 12 pts · 23h
The old [people] man (as a verb) the boat.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 7 pts · 22h
Thank you!
guy@piefed.social · 8 pts · 1d
This one took me a couple of rereads lol
macji@pawb.social · 7 pts · 18h
Have you ever had a dream that, that, um, that you had, uh, that you had to, you could, you do, you wit, you wa, you could do so, you do you could, you want, you wanted him to do you so much you could do anything?
protist@retrofed.com · 3 pts · 1d
This one is different if you're reading vs saying it though, I would def emphasize syllables differently for "The old man" (subj) vs "The old" (subj) "man" (verb)
tigeruppercut@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 9h
My favorite is "The horse raced past the barn fell."
BlueberryWalnut@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 12m
Create machines create machines create machine create
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 16h
"You can't have your cake and eat it too!"
cadekat@pawb.social · 58 pts · 1d
I have zero people, therefore more people have been to Berlin than I have. If I had a sufficient number of people, this sentence could be false. I'd probably need to be a dictator of a medium sized country, but it's possible.
bob_lemon@feddit.org · 14 pts · 1d
Berlin had 12.4 million visitors in 2025. not all of those will have visited for the first time, but I'd still argue that medium sized won't suffice here.
To say nothing about the fact that there is no time limit on when the person needs to have visited.
Natanael@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 19h
Xi have more people than Berlin
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 57 pts · 1d
This is perfectly sensical. The speaker owns less humans than have visited Berlin.
tramdan@piefed.social · 23 pts · 23h
Fewer
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 10 pts · 23h
Sure
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 23h
Accepted
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 20h
Affirmative
Natanael@infosec.pub · 6 pts · 19h
Ack
chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 20h
Or, the speaker is not a person, and is some kind of plural entity, and the number of their instances that visited Berlin isn't as large as it could be
MaskedNybbles@piefed.social · 2 pts · 20h
untorquer@quokk.au · 1 pts · 20h
If the speaker owns the people then does their visited Berlin become the speakers?
LodeMike@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 19h
Speaker can own 0 people
IndignantIguana@piefed.social · 55 pts · 1d
I feel a lot more like I did when I got here than I do now.
Zizzy@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 1d
Thats a good one i like that
LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 19h
This one genuinely inflicts psychic damage to my brain.
tetris11@feddit.uk · 1 pts · 1d
There isn't a place on Earth I'd rather not be
shweddy@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 1d
Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like
ceenote@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 1d
You've got to be kidding me. I've been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It's just common sense.
elevenbones@sh.itjust.works · 7 pts · 1d
I know i sure have.
Chrobin@discuss.tchncs.de · 30 pts · 1d
In German, we have "Nachts ist es kälter als draußen", which means "at night, it's colder than outside"
v4ld1z@lemmy.zip · 8 pts · 1d
Bier schmeckt besser als im Glas
Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 20h
Beer tastes better than in a glass? 🤔
v4ld1z@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 19h
Yup :)
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 1d
But this sentence does have meaning.
napoleonsdumbcousin@feddit.org · 30 pts · 1d
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_illusion
lime@feddit.nu · -9 pts · 1d
ah prescriptive linguistics, never change.
charokol@lemmy.zip · 13 pts · 1d
This isn’t prescriptive linguistics
lime@feddit.nu · -2 pts · 1d
if these linguists are surprised that people use language however they like then they sure as beans ain't descriptive.
RichardNixos@lemmy.ml · 15 pts · 1d
i don't think people are naturally speaking in Escher sentences.
lime@feddit.nu · 1 pts · 1d
i mean if you say
charokol@lemmy.zip · 6 pts · 1d
Nobody is surprised by anything. They’re describing a phenomenon that happens in language.
postman@literature.cafe · 10 pts · 1d
Can you rephrase it to show the meaning more clearly?
panda_abyss@lemmy.ca · 20 pts · 1d
Sure.
This is an example of a sentence that has meaning.
postman@literature.cafe · 14 pts · 1d
Ok. Thought you were talking about Berlin.
Natanael@infosec.pub · 1 pts · 19h
Berlin doesn't have meaning.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 1d
"I have been to Berlin zero times. More people have been to Berlin than i have."
GiveOver@feddit.uk · 10 pts · 1d
Are you joking because that makes no sense
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 7 pts · 1d
Huh, cool! No I'm being serious. It makes sense to me, even if it isn't grammatical -- i wouldn't notice that it wasn't grammatical except that it was pointed out in the meme.
Maybe how much sense it makes is determined culturally.
If i were trying to remove more ambiguity, i would say, "I have been to Berlin zero times. More people have been to Berlin than I have been."
The last "been" is one of those "assumed" words that linguists talk about people leaving out of sentences.
Let me know if that makes more sense.
GiveOver@feddit.uk · 8 pts · 1d
What are you actually trying to say though? The sentence ostensibly compares two values. "Number of times you've been to Berlin" vs "Amount of people who've been to Berlin". You can't compare those two. As a maths teacher would say, you're mixing your units.
jtrek@startrek.website · 5 pts · 1d
I feel like the sentence is trying to communicate
This relies on some illusionary filling in the gaps.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1d
Exactly. It is an ambiguous sentence. The interesting thing for me is how I could read it and not realize it was ambiguous because of my brain trying to fill in the gaps and understand what the other person was trying to say.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1d
Huh, oh i see what you're saying now.
If I've never been to Berlin, than the number of people who have been to Berlin is greater than the number of me.
Where P = number of people who have been to Berlin.
Me = number of me, who hasn't been to Berlin = 1
P > 1.
It seems like what you're saying is that this sentence either obvious on its face, because Berlin is a major City that plenty of people have obviously been to, or ambiguous that it is comparing the number of times I've been to Berlin to something undefined. I would agree that on closer inspection, the question is ambiguous!
I would also say that P is also implicitly context dependent, in other undefined ways. Perhaps i mean that there are other people in my situation who have been to Berlin, where i have not.
One underlying assumption I'm discovering through this discussion is that to me, the sentence implies that the speaker has been to Berlin zero times. But on closer inspection, that isn't the only way to read it. In a context where it wasn't clear if the speaker had been to Berlin or not, it would make much less sense.
Have you heard of the book "thinking fast and slow?" by kahneman? I'm not sure how rigorous the science is, but it has other examples of sentences that people will interpret incorrectly if they aren't thinking carefully, because of the way that brains make unconscious assumptions to save energy and try not to think that hard.
Some examples are, "What do Cows drink?" people who have to answer quickly without thought tend to say milk.
Another:
Most people answering quickly say $0.10
homura1650@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
You are still leaving words out. Under a standard analysis of English, the full sentence would be:
In my judgement as a native English speaker (with an undergraduates degree in linguistics), both that and the original sentence are grammatical. However, it is not obvious to me what they mean.
Looking at it as a linguist, I could hypothesise that the meaning is:
A) The number of people who have been to Berlin is greater than the number of times I have been to Berlin.
Going back to the original sentence, I could also hypothesise (as others in this thread have) that the underlying sentence is
Meaning that I posses a quantity of people, and that quantity is smaller than the quantity of people who have been to Berlin.
Neither of these meanings are intuitive to me (a native speaker), and I would struggle to produce a coherent analysis of either of them. To be clear, that last part is not disqualifing, there are plenty of things in language that have elluded coherent analysis. And many more that have done so from me.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1d
That goes to show how easy it is to leave words out and not realize it!
In my other answer to the post, I try to explain what possible reasons there might be for the sentence making intuitive sense to me, even though I missed all the possible ambiguities until they were pointed out.
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d
No what they said does make sense but it's an interpretation of what was meant. It is not what was said.
LwL@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3h
It's interpretable that way because it's the only sensible meaning the sentence could have, but grammatically it's pretty much nonsense (the only grammatically correct interpretation I can parse from that is that the speaker owns less people than have been to berlin). It's purely context inference, it could say "more people berlin than I" and you can come up with the same interpretation.
Fwiw I wouldn't reach that one at all, best I could come up with is "I am one person, more than one person has been to berlin, so more people have been to berlin than just me".
It undoubtedly is nonsense.
NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io · 2 pts · 1d
Good one.
nightlily@leminal.space · 15 pts · 18h
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de · 9 pts · 1d
In German there is this one poem made of contradictions:
Dunkel war's, der Mond schien helle,
als ein Auto blizeschnelle
langsam um die runde Ecke bog.
Drinnen sassen stehend Leute,
schweigend ins Gespräch vertieft
And I foget the rest....
luciferofastora@feddit.org · 11 pts · 22h
Small correction (you missed a line and rhyme) plus additional lines. There are variations, I'm just reciting the one I know, as best as I know it.
As for a translation, slightly liberal due to missing vocabulary:
echodot@feddit.uk · 2 pts · 13h
Oh so it's basically the German version of Two Dead Men.
No one can ever remember more than that
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 1 pts · 4h
Instant Vietnam flashback to school
Zacryon@feddit.org · 8 pts · 9h
Can make sense, imo.
If the speaker has never been to Berlin, then, naturally, more people will have been there than the speaker.
EddoWagt@feddit.nl · 8 pts · 9h
Even if the speakers has been there a million times... The speaker is still a single person, so there will definitely have been more people in Berlin than only the speaker
BambiDiego@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 5h
See: No well-informed meaning.
echodot@feddit.uk · 7 pts · 13h
Cleopatra lived closer in time to the stegosaurus then we do now.
BambiDiego@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 13h
Statistically there are more people than outside the average.
SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de · 0 pts · 4h
There are more atoms in a single molecule of water than there are stars in the solar system
Mylemmypt@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
It was midnight and the sun was shining; The swallows were grazing, whilst the cows leapt from branch to branch; An old man, just 14 years old; Sitting upright on a rounded stone with four corners; Silent, he said: “The four greatest prophets were three: Abraham and Jeremiah!”
tetris11@feddit.uk · 5 pts · 1d
these are falsehoods, not ambiguous nonsense
weps@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
This sentence is wrong.
moopet@sh.itjust.works · 4 pts · 1d
This sentence is false don'tthinkaboutitdon'tthinkaboutitdon'tthinkaboutitdon'tthinkaboutit
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 1d
Technically correct is the best kind of correct
explodicle@sh.itjust.works · 5 pts · 1d
Python speakers unaffected
antianarchist@sopuli.xyz · 5 pts · 1d
Probably in chapter 1 of “How to Politician”
Kanda@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 10h
Well, you've only been to Berlin a few times while other people have been there millions of times
isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 1d
What is the difference between an Escher sentence and a non sequitur?
GalacticSushi@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 21 pts · 1d
A non-sequitur just doesn't relate back to the current topic of discussion in any meaningful way.
An Escher sentence, as I understand it, sounds valid but doesn't actually have any real meaning when you actually parse through it. A non-sequitur still has meaning as a sentence, it's just off-topic.
moopet@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 1d
Cheese is available.
isVeryLoud@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 14h
omgwhere???
crapwittyname@feddit.uk · 4 pts · 4h
This is one of the posts of all time
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 2 pts · 1d
The point of language is to convey meaning. Grammar is less important than what the speaker wants to tell other people.
If this sentence, in context of a larger conversation, has meaning to the people listening to it, then congratulations! Rejoice, for communication has been achieved! Whether it was grammatically correct or not is irrelevant, because the intended target understands.
Language changes over time. Nobody just decided to come up with modern English one day and it caught on, it's a gross pot filled with words and grammar from many other languages (some more melted than others, so not really a melting pot), and mostly filtered from a language nobody speaks anymore.
So having what are essentially arbitrary rules that dictate how things must always be for that language is already pretty dumb to me.
Zizzy@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 23 pts · 1d
But Escher sentences eschew that, because they are gramatically fine but convey no real meaning. Which is why a paradox like "this sentence is a lie" counts as one. And I like them because escher sentences are a rebel jist like me frfr
RichardNixos@lemmy.ml · 8 pts · 1d
such a flex to put Escher and eschew so close together 🙌
EggInDisguise@lemmy.blahaj.zone · -2 pts · 1d
Yes but my point is that if it conveys meaning to the intended target, it's irrelevant.
Plenty of sentences, out of context, have no real meaning. The example in OP is one that could have meaning in the right context, which would be understood by its recipient
null@piefed.nullspace.lol · 20 pts · 1d
You're both looking at it from completely different angles.
You're seeing it at a way to criticise someone's grammar; they're looking at it as a puzzle to construct a grammatically correct sentence without imparting any meaning.
treesapx@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
This is one of those points that, although correct, is so vague as to be largely pointless unless discussing miscommunication or something of the like. Or are you suggesting we are never allowed to talk about sentence structure or logic again?
Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 3 pts · 1d
Agree with this 100%
Folks that spend time sniping grammatical errors are boring. I'll go out of my way to decipher someone's weird ass sentence structure just so they feel understood. Say your grammatically inccorect Yoda sounding shit to me please.
NightFantom@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 11h
But it's not sniping grammatical errors, it's constructing a sentence that feels right but is devoid of meaning. This is a puzzle, not someone's embarrassment.
Sanguine@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 27m
I was responding to the parent comment not to OP.
And to be fair, if the person in OP may have just found the most ridiculous way to say they've never been to Berlin.
dismay3915@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 19h
I have a very weird condition that such sentences make me unexplainably angry. I mean, physically crashing out going into monke mode angry.
Jankatarch@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 16h
I feel like one of those apes being shown magic tricks.
SkyNTP@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 1d
Like most sentences, this sentence has meaning in the right context. For example, imagine I told you beforehand that I owned people. Suddenly there is tons of meaning.
Out of context, most sentences also don't have meaning. The lone sentences we do find meaning in have lots of bagaged context that is just assumed.