Buffalo

The sentence "Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo", a well-known-to-linguistics-students grammatically correct phrase in English, is very often not presented in a way that helps people understand it.

To teach it to my daughter this morning, I took her through it step by step:

Cats bully mice.

Which mice? Some mice are bullied by rats. Cats gang up with the rats on those mice, and bully them too:

Cats bully mice rats bully.

Which cats? The ones from Buffalo, NY:

Buffalo cats bully mice rats bully.

Another word for bully is "buffalo", meaning to overawe or intimidate someone. (Imagine a buffalo coming at you—wouldn't you be buffaloed?)

Buffalo cats buffalo mice rats buffalo.

How about instead of cats doing it, it's buffalo? (The plural of buffalo is also buffalo, just like moose.)

Buffalo buffalo buffalo mice rats buffalo.

Maybe the buffalo (who used to be cats) are just buffaloing other buffalo:

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo rats buffalo.

And you know what's next ... instead of rats, well, the buffalo tend to gang up and buffalo (bully) buffalo that other buffalo are already buffaloing.

Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo.