Qua qua qua
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Today's xkcd:
There's also per se per se. Or should it be per se per se?
And how to recurse?
March 10, 2022 @ 6:09 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Linguistics in the comics
« previous post | next post »
Today's xkcd:
There's also per se per se. Or should it be per se per se?
And how to recurse?
March 10, 2022 @ 6:09 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Linguistics in the comics
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Yerushalmi said,
March 10, 2022 @ 6:29 am
I can never read the word "per se" without immediately thinking about how this meaning affects the sentence: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/magazine/1990/10/07/may-the-best-bug-win/e9547316-60a5-440a-9b22-b850348279eb/?utm_term=.58617f26f5d9
Roscoe said,
March 10, 2022 @ 7:25 am
Somewhere, Samuel Beckett is smiling…
Pau Amma said,
March 10, 2022 @ 7:38 am
Deep questions all. Here's another: can a lawyer face ethical charges for using scienter scienter?
Murray Smith said,
March 10, 2022 @ 9:42 am
To revive an old chestnut: punctuate this string of words so that it makes sense:
Alice where Mary had had had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher
Philip Taylor said,
March 10, 2022 @ 10:00 am
Much to my surprise, my first attempt at punctuation proved to yield a meaningful sentence — Alice, where Mary had had "had had had", had had "had had"; "had had" had had a better effect on the teacher.
Lance said,
March 10, 2022 @ 1:47 pm
BillR said,
March 10, 2022 @ 8:29 pm
And then, of course, there’s the old chestnut, “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.”
Terry Hunt said,
March 10, 2022 @ 11:04 pm
Chestnut Buffalo? What other coat colours do they have?
Viseguy said,
March 10, 2022 @ 11:45 pm
The cartoon's premise is based on a logical fallacy. To use "qua" to sound pretentious is still to use it qua qua, no? In fact, I'm hard put to imagine a lexically appropriate use of "qua" that would not be qua qua qua. Which leads ineluctably to the question whether the cartoon's use of "qua qua qua" is indeed a "nice" use of "qua qua qua" qua "qua qua qua" or a meretricious one.
(Sorry, world events have put me in a foul mood.)
David Morris said,
March 11, 2022 @ 12:16 am
In Australia, we don't use buffalo qua verb (even though there are feral water buffalo in the Northern Territory) and I have never encountered it other than in this contrived sentence. How commonly is it used in places where you have actual buffalo(e)(s)?
Philip Taylor said,
March 11, 2022 @ 5:36 am
I'm with David on this one — I have never understood the buffalo$^∞$ thing and it had not previously occured to me that there could be a verb "to buffalo", although now that I know that there is I see that the OED confirms this :
D.O. said,
March 11, 2022 @ 4:53 pm
Were they turned into the frogs? Should we call a prince-ss charming?
Terry Hunt said,
March 11, 2022 @ 9:42 pm
Re: buffalo v. Though British, I've certainly encountered it from time to time since adolescence (if not before), though more often in the passive, i.e. someone being bufalloed. Perhaps this arises from a liking for American genre fiction such as westerns, detective stories, and sf & fantasy.
Terpomo said,
March 12, 2022 @ 1:39 am
Murray, your example reminds me of another sentence which I've sometimes seen discussed alongside it, which is "A woman without her man is nothing". This can be punctuated as:
A woman, without her man, is nothing.
Or as:
A woman: without her, man is nothing!
(The latter seems to me to be more empirically accurate: I've heard of functional female separatist communities, but not functional male separatist ones. I'm hardly unbiased here given my own gender though.)
D.O., it's as if you read my mind (well, fairly obvious joke I guess)- I found myself thinking of this classic from Kajto.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw6V49hlx98
Benjamin said,
March 12, 2022 @ 6:50 am
I never got why "buffalo" is the one that got famous, if "fish" works just as well assuming only the uncontroversial noun and verb meaning.
(Maybe because it's less about language per se and more about language qua admitting more than just nouns and verbs, but also adjectives…?)
Philip Taylor said,
March 12, 2022 @ 7:21 am
Is it (perhaps) because "Fish" doesn't work as a topographical qualifier, whereas "Buffalo" does ? There is a town called "Fish" (if Geotargit is to be believed), but I would imagine that far more people are aware that there is a place called "Buffalo" than are aware that there is a place called "Fish".
Terpomo said,
March 12, 2022 @ 11:57 pm
The 'buffalo' sentence also has a greater chance of being true; fish may eat smaller fish, but I don't think they go fishing for them.
Philip Taylor said,
March 13, 2022 @ 8:50 am
Angler fish do …
Tim Martin said,
March 13, 2022 @ 11:36 pm
David: In my experience, verb "buffalo" is uncommon in the US. Though I can't remember a time when I didn't know it, so I assume I must've heard it at a young age.
Funnily enough, I just looked up "buffalo" in a dictionary, and it doesn't even mean what I thought it does! I thought it meant to pester or harrass, but apparently it means to intimidate or baffle!
Michael Watts said,
March 14, 2022 @ 7:13 pm
Speaking as another North American, the only context in which I have ever encountered a notional "buffalo" verb is the example of a sentence consisting of nothing but the token "buffalo" some number of times.
It tends to detract from the example.
Terpomo said,
March 15, 2022 @ 3:43 am
I can think of a handful of other cases in which I've seen one, such as in a children's book of animal-based idioms and a Zippy the Pinhead comic. (There were some Zippy books in my dad's house growing up; I have no idea to what extent this screwed me up.)
Batchman said,
March 20, 2022 @ 5:34 pm
"per se per se" calls to my mind John Lennon's "No. 9 Dream."