If you are someone that speaks English, you probably already realize that not everything happens as it should when it comes to the rules of the language. In fact, there are times when even a skilled master of the language is going to have a difficult time expressing themselves properly. That is where the following sentences come in. They are correct in every sense of the word but when you read them, you can’t help but wonder how they could be written properly.
1. All the faith he had had had had no effect on his life.
2. Wouldn’t the sentence “I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign” have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?
3. The old man the boats.
4. Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.
5. Whether the weather be fine
Or whether the weather be not
Whether the weather be cold
Or whether the weather be hot
We’ll weather the weather
Whatever the weather
Whether we like it or not.
6. You have just begun reading the sentence you just finished reading.
7. One-one was a race horse.
Two-two was one too.
One-one won one race.
Two-two won one too.
8. The horse raced past the barn fell.
9. I sometimes read read as read, when it’s supposed to be read as read.
10. Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Buffalo! It’s a noun! It’s a city! It’s a verb (meaning “to intimidate”)!
It plays on reduced relative clauses, different part-of-speech readings of the same word, and center embedding, all in the same sentence. Stare at it until you get the following meaning: “Bison from Buffalo, New York, who are intimidated by other bison in their community, also happen to intimidate other bison in their community.”
11. “I see”, said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.
12. One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas; how he got into my pajamas, I’ll never know.
13. James and Billy were asked to write about their weekend. Billy wrote ” I had some ice cream over the weekend”. James wrote “I had had some icecream over the weekend”.
James, while Billy had had had, had had had had. ‘Had had’, had been the correct answer.
14. “I never said she stole my money” – if you place an emphasis on one word at a time it changes the meaning, I never said she stole my money. I never said she stole my money. I never said she stole my money. Etc
15. Have you ever noticed that read rhymes with lead, and read rhymes with lead? Also read and lead don’t rhyme. Neither do read and lead.
