Grammatically Correct Sentence #1

Buffalo buffalo whom other Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

You may be thinking “what the heck!?” at this sentence. But yes, it’s true. This sentence illustrates how homophones and homonyms can make sentences confusing. If you break it down, you might figure out the meaning a little better. To start, the sentence uses three different meanings of the word “buffalo” – “Buffalo”, a city in New York; “buffalo”, the verb meaning ‘to bully’; “buffalo”, the American animal. The city ‘Buffalo’ is used to describe the animal as an adjective (as in the same way that you may say the Dallas woman, or the London streets), as they bully other Buffalo. So, let’s replace the adjective ‘Buffalo’ with ‘American’, and the verb ‘buffalo’ with ‘bully.

American buffalo (whom other American buffalo bully), bully American buffalo.

Strip the sentence of its adjective, and it may become even more clear.

Buffalo (whom other buffalo bully) bully buffalo. 

Grammatically Correct Sentence #2

I saw octopuses in the ocean.

You may be talking with your friends, and say this sentence. Your friends, laugh at you, then tell you that the plural word for octopuses is actually “octopi”. Well, if they do – you can go ahead and laugh at them and call them incorrect, pretentious nerds because you’re actually grammatically correct!

If you use English correctly, the way to pluralize a word with an “s” at the end would be to add “es”, therefore turning “octopus” into “octopuses”, logically. However, for some reason, a group of people thought that giving words proper Latin plural endings would be correct, therefore, it would be “octopi”. The thing is, the word “octopus” actually comes from Greek – meaning the word would actually be “octopodes”! However, one thing that everyone forgot is that when a word is brought to the English language, it is subject to the rule of English grammar – bringing us back to the word “octopuses”.

However, despite this, all three (octopuses / octopi / octopodes) are considered to be grammatically correct, so you can use any one you choose. But “octopi” is not any more correct than the others! 

Grammatically Correct Sentence #3 

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

Wait … how can a color not have a color, since when can an idea sleep, and how is it possible for one to sleep furiously?! Well, this is probably the most famous example – brought up by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s. Basically, it’s saying that a sentence that doesn’t make sense can still be correct. Does it have a predicate and a subject? Yup (ideas and sleep respectively). Green is an adjective, and colorless and furiously are adverbs that are correctly attached to their respective nouns and verbs.

Grammatically Correct Sentence #4

Go.

Two letters? Yup. It doesn’t need any more than that. It has a predicate (obviously, it is Go). And the subject is an imperative sentence (or commanding sentence), which means that the subject is already implied without having to be there because you can’t tell yourself, and you can’t tell someone who you’re not talking to to do something, so you’re obviously talking in second-person when using an imperative sentence. And that’s all you really need to have a complete sentence. Adverbs and adjectives are simply optional!