prog: (khan)
prog ([personal profile] prog) wrote2005-07-20 02:00 pm
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WP's article about fuck is a thing of beauty.
"Fucking fucker's fucking fucked, fuck!" ("It is broken, with additional emphasis on dismay.")

For a G-rated bonus article, see also buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.

[identity profile] melskunk.livejournal.com 2005-07-20 06:06 pm (UTC)(link)
I love Wikipedia even MORE now! Where else can you have an article like THAT? Not the mother-fucking encyclopaedia britanica, the fuckers...

[identity profile] ex-colorwhe.livejournal.com 2005-07-20 06:12 pm (UTC)(link)
oh, i am so happy now.

[identity profile] tahnan.livejournal.com 2005-07-20 06:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Enh. Not impressed; it's more a celebration of the word (which is fine) than an article (which would be better). The section on the word's meaning is scattered and incomplete.

Nor is there any mention of Quang Phuc Dong's pioneering work in the alternation "Fuck you" vs. "*Fuck yourself".

[identity profile] greenlily.livejournal.com 2005-07-20 07:02 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh, that is excellent. Thank you for sharing. :)

[identity profile] xymotik.livejournal.com 2005-07-20 06:37 pm (UTC)(link)
You had me there for a moment: I know WP as the acronym for the Washington Post. An article on "fuck" in that newspaper truly would've been a thing of beauty.

An anthropology teacher I had at UMaine was working with students in the Netherlands, interviewing speakers of the Frisian language, "the closest existing language to English." One student asked a farmer what he did in his spare time and he responded that he liked to fuck goats. She was shocked, so she repeated the question and he gave the same answer. Her reaction was something along the lines of, "Oh, I see." Turns out what he meant was that he had a hobby of breeding goats, not doing them, because "fuck" is related to the Old English word for breeding, or for that matter (according to the WP article), the Dutch verb fokken, meaning to breed animals.

[identity profile] dougo.livejournal.com 2005-07-20 07:48 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, I thought it was the Washington Post too, and was impressed.

That might be a good place to link to fuckthiswebsite.com (pointer from [livejournal.com profile] jwz).

Also, you can get a lot more Buffalos in that sentence if you talk about American bison from a city in upstate New York.

[identity profile] novalis.livejournal.com 2005-07-21 01:42 am (UTC)(link)
A lot more than ℵ0?

[identity profile] dougo.livejournal.com 2005-07-21 07:03 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, about 60% more.

[identity profile] cortezopossum.livejournal.com 2005-07-20 06:38 pm (UTC)(link)
Most of this (as far as usage goes) looks like it was lifted directly from a flash animation parody of 50's educational films all about the word 'fuck'. http://www.funnypics.cc/media/history_of_the_f-word.php

Which someone else said is also based on a Monty Python skit -- I don't know who said that but I can see Monty Python doing something like this.

[identity profile] xymotik.livejournal.com 2005-07-20 06:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Yup, the credits at the end say the audio was from Monty Python.

[identity profile] apkeimel.livejournal.com 2005-07-20 07:59 pm (UTC)(link)
They forgot "Fuckitty"

[identity profile] novalis.livejournal.com 2005-07-21 01:50 am (UTC)(link)
My friend Aaron points out another wonderful innovation in language:

More people have been to Germany than I have.

Sounds like a real sentence, but... what does it mean? (note: for full effect, this needs to be spoken out loud, since the final have is pronounced as the helper, rather than the posessive).

[identity profile] tahnan.livejournal.com 2005-07-21 05:42 pm (UTC)(link)
Germany? Fascinating. The original seems to have been "Berlin", which rapidly morphed into "Moscow" and "Russia". See Kai von Fintel's exploration of its history.

[identity profile] ahkond.livejournal.com 2005-07-23 04:03 am (UTC)(link)
Have you seen the Wire? It's an HBO cop/crime show that is extremely well done. In the first season, there's a scene in which two homicide detectives go over a murder scene and find a bunch of evidence, and their dialogue consists solely of dozens of variations on "fuck".

"Motherfucker ..."
"Fuck!"
(pause)
"Fuck me ..."
"Fuckity fuck fuck fuck."
(etc. etc.)

It's marvelous.