Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher.

[pne]

Found on the CONLANG mailing list:

Een gravengraf is een graf waar een graaf in ligt begraven.
Als in Graven graven gravengraven graven, graven graven gravengraven.

(Which reminded me of a similar but not so "elegant" German sentence which is found in the subject. Similar ones are "Selten ess' ich Essig. Ess' ich Essig, ess' ich Essig mit Salat." and "Selten küsst der Küster. Küsst der Küster, küsst der Küster seine Frau.")

Comments

[nakedcelt.livejournal.com]

Translations, if you would?

[pne.livejournal.com]

The German title is roughly, "If flies fly behind flies, then flies fly behind flies" (but the construction is not exactly parallel in each clause).

The other two Germans sentences are "I rarely eat vinegar. When I eat vinegar, I eat vinegar with salad" and "The sexton rarely kisses. When the sexton kisses, the sexton kisses his wife."

I'm not certain about the Dutch, but based on German cognates my best guess is, "A graavengraf (count's grave) is a grave wherein a count is buried. When counts dig count's graves in Graven, then counts dig count's graves."

[nakedcelt.livejournal.com]

Ah. How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. Although that has two repeated elements. I can't think of a real English equivalent off the top of my head.

had had

[pne.livejournal.com]

I once saw a contrived example about two boys and the grammaticalness of a sentence they wrote in a paper, which went something along the lines of "Paul, where John had had 'had', had had 'had had'; 'had had' had been the appropriate thing to write" or so.

Re: had had

[elgrande.livejournal.com]

"[...] "had had" had had the better effect on the teacher" is what I've seen, so there's one more had.

Re: had had

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ah; that sounds vaguely familiar.

I hadn't remembered the second part of the sentence very well, partly because it seems so awfully contrived. It's likely that the version you provided is the "canonical" one.

If only Had had had "had had"!

[timwi.livejournal.com]

The version of the "had" sentence that I stumbled upon had 8 "had"s in a row.

hawthornowl and I came up with an extended version that has 14 "had"s in a row, but it relies on you accepting "Had" as a first name (perhaps short for "Hadrian" or something).

In the English test, while Alice had had "had had", Had had had "had". Had Had had "had had", Had would have been correct.

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Cool! I don't know nearly enough Zungenbrecher.