StringJunky Posted April 24, 2022 Share Posted April 24, 2022 (edited) Inspired by another thread, I thought it might be good to have a place to put funny or otherwise notable ambiguities, and any comments about them in general Here's some that have been posted already elsewhere by TheVat: Kids make nutritious snacks Miners refuse to work after death Panda mating fails, veterinarian takes over Old school pillars are replaced by alumni One I've found: A woman in the UK gives birth every 48 seconds Edited April 24, 2022 by StringJunky 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted April 24, 2022 Share Posted April 24, 2022 Your offspring may be nice, but German children are kinder. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phi for All Posted April 24, 2022 Share Posted April 24, 2022 I enthusiastically recommend Trump with no qualifications whatsoever. In my opinion, we'd be very fortunate to get him to actually work for us. I can assure you that no person would be better for the job. I can't say enough good things about him, nor recommend him too highly. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genady Posted April 24, 2022 Share Posted April 24, 2022 More "textbook" examples (from Yule, George. The Study of Language) : Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. Annie bumped into a man with an umbrella. Their child has grown another foot. I once shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I’ll never know. (Groucho Marx) These are designed for small boys and girls. The parents of the bride and groom were waiting outside. The students complained to everyone that they couldn’t understand. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVat Posted April 24, 2022 Share Posted April 24, 2022 British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands 4 hours ago, StringJunky said: A woman in the UK gives birth every 48 seconds There's a scene from The Meaning of Life which that one calls to mind. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eise Posted April 25, 2022 Share Posted April 25, 2022 Example I once read about AI in the domain of language understanding. It has 4 (at least?) meanings: "They saw the girl with the binoculars." 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joigus Posted April 25, 2022 Share Posted April 25, 2022 Combinations of negative with composite sentences are my favourites. With imperative: 1) Don't just sit there and introduce yourself! 2) Don't just sit around and eat! (Solved with a comma in writing, and with voice modulation when speaking.) With 'because': I didn't marry him because of the money. Nice topic, BTW. 3 hours ago, Eise said: Example I once read about AI in the domain of language understanding. It has 4 (at least?) meanings: "They saw the girl with the binoculars." I found 4 possible meanings. Some of them are gruesome. One, bordering plain absurd. But nice example! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eise Posted April 25, 2022 Share Posted April 25, 2022 I assume you've got the correct four meanings... Yes, It works in Dutch too. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joigus Posted April 25, 2022 Share Posted April 25, 2022 (edited) 16 minutes ago, Eise said: I assume you've got the correct four meanings... Yes, It works in Dutch too. Yes. My rendering: They saw the girl who was carrying carries the binoculars They, with the help of some binoculars, saw the girl They spotted the girl, who was carrying some binoculars They spotted the girl with the help of some binoculars Nice example! First and second: 'saw" = use a saw to cut something 18 minutes ago, Eise said: Yes, It works in Dutch too. Is the ambiguity also in 'zagen' and 'met'? Edited April 25, 2022 by joigus Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
swansont Posted April 25, 2022 Share Posted April 25, 2022 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/254896-a-panda-walks-into-a-cafe-he-orders-a-sandwich A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air. "Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife annual and tosses it over his shoulder. "I'm a panda," he says, at the door. "Look it up." The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation. Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iNow Posted April 25, 2022 Share Posted April 25, 2022 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arete Posted April 25, 2022 Share Posted April 25, 2022 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eise Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 19 hours ago, joigus said: Is the ambiguity also in 'zagen' and 'met'? Yep. Funny isn't it? The words are different, but they work semantically exactly the same: "Zagen": present tense of 'to saw', past tense of 'to see' "Met': 'with', with (!) the same ambiguities as in English. You have a talent for Dutch! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVat Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 21 hours ago, iNow said: Rachel Ray finds inspiration.... It seems as if texting has generally decreased awareness of the uses of punctuation marks like the comma. Just one would have helped that sentence convey its intended meaning (and deprived us of a good laugh). What's funny is the title above that sentence made full use of commas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phi for All Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 1 hour ago, TheVat said: It seems as if texting has generally decreased awareness of the uses of punctuation marks like the comma. Just one would have helped that sentence convey its intended meaning (and deprived us of a good laugh). What's funny is the title above that sentence made full use of commas. I didn't see it as a multiple comma violation. I thought they left out the word "for", as in "Rachel Ray finds inspiration in cooking FOR her family and her dog". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iNow Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 1 minute ago, Phi for All said: I didn't see it as a multiple comma violation. I thought they left out the word "for", as in "Rachel Ray finds inspiration in cooking FOR her family and her dog". It's ambiguous that way Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Phi for All Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 4 minutes ago, iNow said: It's ambiguous that way Witch weigh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Cuthber Posted April 26, 2022 Share Posted April 26, 2022 I was offended, but nevertheless amused to see a graffiti addition to a sign asking for people to help funding the spastics association (now renamed Scope, I think). They turned " Help spastics" into "Help! spastics!". Chemistry (and I guess other) journals are full of instances of a particular type of error. The material was analysed using chromatography. There's only one thing there that can be doing anything, and that includes chromatography... Did the material analyse itself? Compare it to "The celebrity was photographed using cocaine". My all time favourite is from a wartime newspaper. The punctuation etc is perfectly correct. A headline that was drafted as British army push bottles up Germans had been repositioned as British army push bottles up Germans And then there's English spelling.... but that's another subject. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genady Posted April 27, 2022 Share Posted April 27, 2022 AFAIK ambiguities exist in all human languages. I wonder, is it a bug or a feature? Or, maybe, a side effect? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genady Posted April 28, 2022 Share Posted April 28, 2022 9 hours ago, Genady said: AFAIK ambiguities exist in all human languages. I wonder, is it a bug or a feature? Or, maybe, a side effect? Of course, I'm not the first asking this question. Here is a 10 years old article, The advantage of ambiguity in language -- ScienceDaily. The opinion of these MIT linguists is that a context disambiguates well enough, so that a language can reuse some parts: "once we understand that context disambiguates, then ambiguity is not a problem -- it's something you can take advantage of, because you can reuse easy [words] in different contexts over and over again." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dimreepr Posted April 28, 2022 Share Posted April 28, 2022 23 hours ago, Genady said: AFAIK ambiguities exist in all human languages. I wonder, is it a bug or a feature? Or, maybe, a side effect? It seems to me to be a method to attack a sentence/idea I don't agree with; a good legal document is free of ambiguity but not free of disagreement. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joigus Posted April 28, 2022 Share Posted April 28, 2022 On 4/26/2022 at 9:14 AM, Eise said: Yep. Funny isn't it? The words are different, but they work semantically exactly the same: "Zagen": present tense of 'to saw', past tense of 'to see' "Met': 'with', with (!) the same ambiguities as in English. You have a talent for Dutch! Thanks, Eise. I think the Dutch --both the language and the people-- are special in many ways, and in a very good way. But ambiguity is certainly no privilege of the Dutch. It's --arguably-- ubiquitous with human communication. It's sure enough present in the animal kingdom too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Janus Posted April 28, 2022 Share Posted April 28, 2022 Finnish: kuusi palaa could translate to any of the following: The spruce is burning The spruce returns The number six is burning The number six returns Six of them are burning Six of them return Your moon is burning Your moon returns Six pieces Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eise Posted April 29, 2022 Share Posted April 29, 2022 "I Vitelli dei Romani sono belli." The meaning depends on which language it is written in: Italian or Latin: Italian: The Romans' calves are beautiful. Latin: Go, Vitellius, at the Roman god's sound of war. Another interesting kind of ambiguity. Same with: "Cane nero magna bella persica!" The black dog eats a nice peach Sing, o Nero, the great Persian wars! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genady Posted April 29, 2022 Share Posted April 29, 2022 It ^^ is interesting but I don't think it fits a definition of ambiguity. There are many words that sound the same in different languages, but have different meanings in them. With a little work, one can make short sentences out of these words. Or, a joke. One of popular jokes among Russian speaking immigrants in Israel was to write back to there Russian friends a sentence which in English means, We live in a hole and swim in a pit. It works because Russian word for 'hole' (дыра) is the same as Hebrew word for apartment (דירה), and Russian word for 'pit' (яма) is the same as Hebrew word for sea (ים). We get new effect by mixing languages. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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