The Artsaypunk

I think what I like about the English language is that it’s just so ridiculously difficult.  For example, did you know that the word “set” has 430 definitions which take 60,000 words to detail in the full Oxford English Dictionary?  I mean, that’s just silly.  It’s amazing to me that languages like Cantonese or Mandarin, with thousands of characters representing individual words and single words with multiple meanings depending on emphasis and nuance, are still generally considered easier to learn than English.  Take your two parts English history, with it’s Germanic and Norman influences, grind in your Greek and Roman roots, and then mix in the Empire’s habit of usurping  words as well as territory along its travels, and you’ve got yourself one tasty language cocktail.  Of course, as far as I’m concerned (not all that far really), the same aspects that make English so difficult to deal with are what makes it such a versatile, beautiful and fun language.

Take this fun little tidbit that a friend of mine (the intrepid Doggy, I believe) had as his email signature a while back:

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Surprisingly, that works out as a grammatically correct, albeit baffling, English sentence.  Let’s dig in:

You have to start with the plural of Buffalo being the same as the singular, the benefit being that you don’t need an article (a/an/the) to introduce a plural.

Then you’ve got three definitions of buffalo:

1) Buffalo – the city in New York state, famous for its wings, and probably other stuff as well.

2) [...]

Have you ever been on a brewery tour?  I’ve only been once.  But it was, as I like to say, “One for the books.”  What these books are or who might be reading them is anyone’s guess, but if they contain an index of wild and wacky things that have happened to me, I’d love to track them down.  In fact, I really need those books; I’m starting to realize that I have a terrible memory.  Actually, in retrospect, it’s somewhat amazing that I remember this brewery tour at all given the circumstances, but I’ll give it a shot.

Living in an all male residence back in the undergraduate days has provided me with no shortage of crazy stories.  This was no exception.  It all started when the good people at Moosehead Beer (a staple of any Maritime diet) had a marketing idea.  The big breweries were always competing to represent the residences on campus.  We would wear their logos and advertise for them at our house events, they would give us free stuff.  It really was a win-win-drunk situation.  I don’t ever remember being encouraged to drink the beer of our sponsor, but we probably would have, and given the $1000 we made on bottle-returns every month I think they missed the boat-race on that one.  Anyway, the beginning of the year always saw the breweries wooing and competing for our favour, until we selected the same sponsor we had every year.  It was fun.  I was a representative for Aitken House one [...]