Posted on 05/01/2022 10:21:48 AM PDT by SamAdams76
I have an amazing story about typing classes I took in high school during the 1970s (I was the only boy in the class).
Anyway, more on that later. This post is about the incredible variations on sentences in the English language. Even though we only have 26 letters in this language, unique sentences are still being produced that have never before been created.
Here is an example:
We will not be seeing you at the restaurant we agreed to meet at later today as we have just had tremendous quantities of exotic meats and desserts at this brunch we just attended, let's instead meet at our home at the appointed time where we will have copious amounts of rum, including one we just procured earlier today at this most unique liquor store we happened to stop at earlier today.
I challenge you to find the above sentence in any other form other than the post I just created today, and it's based on reality as I just texted this out to people we will meet later today in a rather convivial and celebratory manner as they had just gotten married (and this sentence is also likely unique and never before written out).
Twenty six letters in the English language and still there are almost an infinite amount of sentences that have not yet been created.
How many monkeys do you need for this?
I think that’s actually two sentences.
It depends upon the punctuation.
I also took typing class in probably 1976 or ‘77. I do not, however, recall a noticeable imbalance of female vs male students. And our teacher was Mr. Fred Rodgers.
Ours were non-electric typewriters of various vintage. My parents had reason to do a lot of typing, so we were privileged to have an electric at home. That electric still had manual carriage return, though.
“almost an infinite amount of sentences that have not yet been created.”
Frivolous use of conjunctions allow a clause to be added to any ‘sentence’ thus “almost” is limiting as there are infinite possibilities.
BTW, your ‘sentence’ is hard to read even on a big screen
But you were all special types, each and every one of you
Two years of typing class it and was the most useful class I had in that high school - which was otherwise like the school in "Welcome Back Kotter"
That’s the way.
The English language??
Why just the English language?
Any language with an alphabet has that same feature. And even Chinese.
What about the Russian language?
It’s two sentences. The second sentence is a run-on sentence. Back in high school, we would get penalized for that.
26 letters, but at least 2 to 3 times the number of pronunciations.
There was probably a more subtle way to get out of paying for dinner...
Well...even just doing 26^26 is 6.1561195802071573107966742884002e+36, which doesn’t include words with more than one instance of the same letter, or sentences that are more than 26 letters.
So yeah, there’s probably simple sentences that have never been uttered.
The language may have just 26 letters, but we have way more phonemes. Having one letter for each phoneme could result in having as many as (or more than) 32 letters, such as in Russian Cyrillic.
Using “th” for two different phonemes is very confusing. Not to mention silent letters.
Anyone with just a few brain cells was already aware of your premise.
What is your point, exactly? I have to believe that your intent is more than simply saying that the English language has infinite possibilities.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.