Second-Order Isograms: These are words in which the letters appear twice. Second-order isograms are generally short letter words, like peep, noon, papa, boob, and so on; but there are longer ones such as intestines and arraigning.
Third Order Isograms: The third-order isogram is very rare because it’s not easy to find a word in which a letter is repeated three times. However, one example is the word deeded, which is the past tense of the verb deed -meaning to transfer via a deed.
When people are passionate about the English language, isogram hunting becomes an interesting hobby. The longest isogram country name is Switzerland and the longest city name is Bricklehampton! And, we’re sure they’re still looking for more!
Garden Path Sentences
If you’re a non-native speaker it can be very complicated trying to understand Garden Path sentences. Basically, they’re linguistic tricks (not always intentional) which are actually correct, even though at first glance they sound incorrect. The problem with garden Path sentences is that the reader and their comprehension get thrown off balance. The grammatical aspect of a sentence changes the order of the words and their meaning, or, it shifts pathways. See below for some examples – and note that even these examples can be difficult to wrap your head around –
The old man the boat: In this sentence we’re not talking about an old man: we’re saying that the boat is manned by the old (generic, plural)
Fat people eat accumulates: You’ve probably read ‘fat people’ (as in obese), but in fact the sentence is referring to the fat that people eat (consume).
A Garden Path sentence will often swing on the lexical ambiguity of just one word, and this word can be used with different meanings. Newspapers, publications, and many blogs use this style of sentence to create dramatic headlines – or Crash Blossoms, which are defined as two grammatically-correct meanings for a sentence.
Paraprasdokians
A paraprasdokian is a figure of speech containing a linguistic twist. The difference between a Garden Path sentence and a Paraprasdokian is that the end of the sentence is usually confusing and/or surprising. A reader will usually be forced to reframe the first part of the sentence when they come across a paraprasdokian. They’re typically used to achieve a humorous, anti-climax, or dramatic effect in literary works.
See below for some famous paraprasdokians –
(Groucho Marx) - I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.
(Will Rogers) - I don’t belong to an organised political party: I’m a Democrat.
(Stephen Colbert) - If I’m reading this graph correctly, I’d be surprised.
(Mitch Hedberg) - I haven’t slept for 10 days, because that would be too long.
It would be interesting to hear how translation experts feel about Garden Path sentences and Paraprasdokians, and how difficult/easy they are to translate!
