"Zij zijn zijn zoons."
Translation:They are his sons.
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haha this is nothing, it can get way worse than this!
“Als in het dorp, waar doorgaans tussen moeilijk te bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen, Bergen, bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen, bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen.“
and it's.. grammatically... correct...
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Well... bergen means a lot of things in dutch. It means mountains, to have a lot of something and to hide something (from 'verbergen') and it's a city. So this sentence means something like "a lot of mountains hiding a lot of mountains, hide a lot of mountains in Bergen." Not very informative, but it is grammatically correct :3
Wow, that's great. Rather like our own "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo", which even has its own Wikipedia page.
A late response to you. I left you below the Spanish's ridiculous no sense phrase.
Cuando cuentas cuentos, cuantos cuentos cuentas cuando cuentas cuentos?
(Replying to @ElCoronelEsponja)
Except that doesn't mean anything, does it?
It does mean something.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo
It.s like in Finland they have : koko kokko kokkokon and lots of other "koko"s and it is a gramatically corect sentence
In Filipino language as well! "Bababa ba?" "Bababa" It sort of means, "are you going out (of the car)?" "yes i am". It's very often used, too. Language is very complex yet simple at the same time!
sounds like a Cantonese tongue twister which is like “gokgo gwokgaa doujau gokgo gwokgaa ge gwokgo” (every nation has a national anthem of her own)
I'm finnish and it's Kokko, kokoo kokoon koko kokko. Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko!
In standard Finnish you should change a final o into a: "Kokko, kokoa kokoon koko kokko. Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko!" This is indeed a grammatically correct and meaningful expression. Indeed, in practice we may pronounce that as Meeppu has written.
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In Italian: - "tre tigri contro tre tigri", - "chi ama chiama chi ama", - "li vuoi quei kiwi?" (modern version: "li vuoi quei Huawei?")
In portuguese we have the word "carteira" that can means wallet, postwoman or student desk. So, we can say "a carteira da carteira na carteira e a carteira na carteira" that means the postawoman's wallet is in the student desk and the postwoman is in the student desk. Not very informative too.
An example in German:
Wenn Fliegen hinter Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach.
Or Fischers Fritz fischt frische Fische. Frische Fische fischt Fischers Fritz
Als vliegen achter vliegen vliegen, vliegen vliegen vliegen achterna in Dutch ;)
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Als achter vliegen vliegen vliegen, vliegen vliegen vliegen achterna (you can put "achter" before the first "vliegen", to have all the words "vliegen" together)
In Serbian: "Gore gore gore gore nego što gore gore dole." meaning "The forests up there burn worse that the forests down there."
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So, the nominative singular for forest in Serbian is gora? Just asking as I learn Polish and gora would mean mountain there. Sounds like a false cognate to me, thus.
"Gora" means "mountain" or "hill". "Forest" would be "šuma". "Gora" and "šuma" are the nominative forms of the words.
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In Serbian, gora is both mountain and forest but it's quite an archaic term. Planina is a mountain and šuma is a forest.
I just watched songfestival. I saw gore gore gore and somehow immediately thought of the Ukrainian song. I hadnt even read your translation yet! (I think it was something about forest and spring and well there was fire..)
But perhaps the word doesn't even appear once. Maybe it was the rhythm of your words.
In arabic we have a part of a famous poem الم الم الم الم بدائه. ان ان ان ان ان اوانه (Alam alamm alam ulim bida'eh. In aan aan an aan awaneh) Which means A pain came and am i dont know its sickness. If a pain hurts ,its time has come
It is very understandable in the old arabic but no one of non standerd arabic speakers will understand it
Like in Dutch: Als vliegen achter vliegen vliegen, vliegen vliegen vliegensvlug
In france, we have " les poules du couvent couvent" same writing, two differents prononciations (and significations).
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Wat was was eer was was was? Eer was was was was was is.
This is also Dutch, and it is correct, and it has a meaning. :) Translated it is something like this: "What was 'was' when 'was' was 'was'? When 'was' was 'was', 'was' was 'is'" Pretty similar to English, actually!
Perhaps our Dutch friends will enjoy this. Try saying it three times, fast.
"She sells sea shells on the sea shore. The shells she sells are sea shore shells, I'm sure."
Perhaps they will enjoy also this "trabalenguas" en español. "Tres tristes tigres tragan trigos en el trigal". Repeat fastly everyone after me :D
What about this Hebrew one?: Isha na'ala na'ala na'ala, na'ala et ha'delet b'fnei ba'ala
And in french, you have "les chaussettes de l'archiduchesse sont-elles sèches archi-sèches". To be repeated several times and quickly.
While the following is not a tongue twister: "Si ton tonton tond ton tonton, ton tonton sera tondu."
I'm just writing this to express my appreciation for most of the comments within this thread. It's so lovely to see how you guys are sharing all kinds of silly looking sentences in various languages. I find it very inspiring, love it <3 Bless your souls! :D
And yours :) it is great to spread your appreciation and inspiration! :)
The world needs more positivity
In Kikuyu language we have Kaana ka Nikora koona koora koora, nako koora koona kaana ka Nikora koora. Means the son of Nikora saw a frog and ran away and thefrog saw Nikora's son and also ran away!
Does anyone actually say this? This seems like this might be a sentiment that needs to be expressed at least sometimes, so is there any less tounge-twisty way that Dutch people say this?
It may look silly, but IMO it is actually not hard to say, even for a learner.
I agree. It's funny; my mother and I had a laugh about it, but we were both able to pronounce it easily.
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Not really, no :'), we just say it like this and I (I'm a Dutchie) didn't even notice it was so repetitive, until I saw it in Duo x')
There is a Turkish word: "müdür müdür müdür müdür?" We assuming there is a person whose name is Müdür. So the meaning: "Is manager Müdür manager or not?
Zij zijn zijn zoons.
Zij = they
first zijn = are
second zijn = his
zoons = sons
Zij (they. It can also mean her. But if you look at the verb you see that it is in Infinitive form and so it is plural) zijn (are - Infinitive form of verb because the subject "zij" is in plural form) zijn (his - refkexive pronoun) zoons (sons) If "zij" had here the meaning "she" the sentence would have looked like this : " zij is zijn dochter." and not the current form "zij zijn zijn zoons." I hope it's clear enough... I sometimes get lost while explaining stufff
Tiny note: the second zijn is a possessive pronoun. Reflexive pronouns refer to same person as the subject of the verb, which here is 'they'.
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Interesting question - In an independent, context-free sentence, I’d say no. However, in Dutch, even if “the horse” is “het paard/beest/vogeltje”, we use “his” or “her” to describe offspring. So I guess you could make an argument for your proposed translation, even if it is a bit of a stretch.
That explains my confusion. I did not realize that in Dutch and probably English we attribute gender to animals when mentioning them by pronouns. Thank you.
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You’re welcome - I’m glad it was helpful. Dutch is full of little wrinkles like that, but don’t let that discourage you! I have always found that reading (even simple books for children) helps me enormously to assimilate patterns that are different between languages. Just trying to remember grammatical rules is pretty deadly for one’s motivation :-)