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This is perfectly sensical. The speaker owns less humans than have visited Berlin.
In German, we have “Nachts ist es kälter als draußen”, which means “at night, it’s colder than outside”
Bier schmeckt besser als im Glas
The opposite is “garden path sentences” that seem incorrect or gibberish at first, but then make sense once you’ve correctly parsed them.
“The old man the boat”
This one is different if you’re reading vs saying it though, I would def emphasize syllables differently for “The old man” (subj) vs “The old” (subj) “man” (verb)
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana
Teach a man to fish and he’ll eat for a day, give a man a fish and he’ll eat for the rest of his (*stab*) life.
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
Police police police police police police police police police police.
This one took me a couple of rereads lol
I feel a lot more like I did when I got here than I do now.
There isn’t a place on Earth I’d rather not be
Thats a good one i like that
It was midnight and the sun was shining; The swallows were grazing, whilst the cows leapt from branch to branch; An old man, just 14 years old; Sitting upright on a rounded stone with four corners; Silent, he said: “The four greatest prophets were three: Abraham and Jeremiah!”
Python speakers unaffected
Probably in chapter 1 of “How to Politician”
I have zero people, therefore more people have been to Berlin than I have. If I had a sufficient number of people, this sentence could be false. I’d probably need to be a dictator of a medium sized country, but it’s possible.
Berlin had 12.4 million visitors in 2025. not all of those will have visited for the first time, but I’d still argue that medium sized won’t suffice here.
To say nothing about the fact that there is no time limit on when the person needs to have visited.
Has Anyone Really Been Far Even as Decided to Use Even Go Want to do Look More Like
You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been further even more decided to use even go need to do look more as anyone can. Can you really be far even as decided half as much to use go wish for that? My guess is that when one really been far even as decided once to use even go want, it is then that he has really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like. It’s just common sense.
I know i sure have.
But this sentence does have meaning.
Escher sentences are ungrammatical because a matrix clause subject like more people is making a comparison between two sets of individuals, but there is no such set of individuals in the second clause.[5] For the sentence to be grammatical, the subject of the second clause must be a bare plural.[6] Linguists have marked that it is “striking” that, despite the grammar of these sentences not possibly having a meaningful interpretation, people so often report that they sound acceptable,[7] and that it is “remarkable” that people seldom notice any error.[5]
ah prescriptive linguistics, never change.
This isn’t prescriptive linguistics
if these linguists are surprised that people use language however they like then they sure as beans ain’t descriptive.
i don’t think people are naturally speaking in Escher sentences.
i mean if you say
Nobody is surprised by anything. They’re describing a phenomenon that happens in language.
Can you rephrase it to show the meaning more clearly?
Sure.
This is an example of a sentence that has meaning.
Ok. Thought you were talking about Berlin.
“I have been to Berlin zero times. More people have been to Berlin than i have.”
Are you joking because that makes no sense
No what they said does make sense but it’s an interpretation of what was meant. It is not what was said.
Huh, cool! No I’m being serious. It makes sense to me, even if it isn’t grammatical – i wouldn’t notice that it wasn’t grammatical except that it was pointed out in the meme.
Maybe how much sense it makes is determined culturally.
If i were trying to remove more ambiguity, i would say, “I have been to Berlin zero times. More people have been to Berlin than I have been.”
The last “been” is one of those “assumed” words that linguists talk about people leaving out of sentences.
Let me know if that makes more sense.
You are still leaving words out. Under a standard analysis of English, the full sentence would be:
More people have been to Berlin than I have been to Berlin.
In my judgement as a native English speaker (with an undergraduates degree in linguistics), both that and the original sentence are grammatical. However, it is not obvious to me what they mean.
Looking at it as a linguist, I could hypothesise that the meaning is:
A) The number of people who have been to Berlin is greater than the number of times I have been to Berlin.
Going back to the original sentence, I could also hypothesise (as others in this thread have) that the underlying sentence is
More people have been to Berlin than I have people.
Meaning that I posses a quantity of people, and that quantity is smaller than the quantity of people who have been to Berlin.
Neither of these meanings are intuitive to me (a native speaker), and I would struggle to produce a coherent analysis of either of them. To be clear, that last part is not disqualifing, there are plenty of things in language that have elluded coherent analysis. And many more that have done so from me.
That goes to show how easy it is to leave words out and not realize it!
In my other answer to the post, I try to explain what possible reasons there might be for the sentence making intuitive sense to me, even though I missed all the possible ambiguities until they were pointed out.
What are you actually trying to say though? The sentence ostensibly compares two values. “Number of times you’ve been to Berlin” vs “Amount of people who’ve been to Berlin”. You can’t compare those two. As a maths teacher would say, you’re mixing your units.
Huh, oh i see what you’re saying now.
If I’ve never been to Berlin, than the number of people who have been to Berlin is greater than the number of me.
Where P = number of people who have been to Berlin.
Me = number of me, who hasn’t been to Berlin = 1
P > 1.
It seems like what you’re saying is that this sentence either obvious on its face, because Berlin is a major City that plenty of people have obviously been to, or ambiguous that it is comparing the number of times I’ve been to Berlin to something undefined. I would agree that on closer inspection, the question is ambiguous!
I would also say that P is also implicitly context dependent, in other undefined ways. Perhaps i mean that there are other people in my situation who have been to Berlin, where i have not.
One underlying assumption I’m discovering through this discussion is that to me, the sentence implies that the speaker has been to Berlin zero times. But on closer inspection, that isn’t the only way to read it. In a context where it wasn’t clear if the speaker had been to Berlin or not, it would make much less sense.
Have you heard of the book “thinking fast and slow?” by kahneman? I’m not sure how rigorous the science is, but it has other examples of sentences that people will interpret incorrectly if they aren’t thinking carefully, because of the way that brains make unconscious assumptions to save energy and try not to think that hard.
Some examples are, “What do Cows drink?” people who have to answer quickly without thought tend to say milk.
Another:
(1) A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball.
How much does the ball cost? _____ cents
Most people answering quickly say $0.10
I feel like the sentence is trying to communicate
- I have never been to Berlin
- many people have been to Berlin
- i am in the minority, having not been to Berlin.
This relies on some illusionary filling in the gaps.
Exactly. It is an ambiguous sentence. The interesting thing for me is how I could read it and not realize it was ambiguous because of my brain trying to fill in the gaps and understand what the other person was trying to say.
Good one.
The point of language is to convey meaning. Grammar is less important than what the speaker wants to tell other people.
If this sentence, in context of a larger conversation, has meaning to the people listening to it, then congratulations! Rejoice, for communication has been achieved! Whether it was grammatically correct or not is irrelevant, because the intended target understands.
Language changes over time. Nobody just decided to come up with modern English one day and it caught on, it’s a gross pot filled with words and grammar from many other languages (some more melted than others, so not really a melting pot), and mostly filtered from a language nobody speaks anymore.
So having what are essentially arbitrary rules that dictate how things must always be for that language is already pretty dumb to me.
But Escher sentences eschew that, because they are gramatically fine but convey no real meaning. Which is why a paradox like “this sentence is a lie” counts as one. And I like them because escher sentences are a rebel jist like me frfr
such a flex to put Escher and eschew so close together 🙌
Yes but my point is that if it conveys meaning to the intended target, it’s irrelevant.
Plenty of sentences, out of context, have no real meaning. The example in OP is one that could have meaning in the right context, which would be understood by its recipient
This is one of those points that, although correct, is so vague as to be largely pointless unless discussing miscommunication or something of the like. Or are you suggesting we are never allowed to talk about sentence structure or logic again?
You’re both looking at it from completely different angles.
You’re seeing it at a way to criticise someone’s grammar; they’re looking at it as a puzzle to construct a grammatically correct sentence without imparting any meaning.
Agree with this 100%
Folks that spend time sniping grammatical errors are boring. I’ll go out of my way to decipher someone’s weird ass sentence structure just so they feel understood. Say your grammatically inccorect Yoda sounding shit to me please.
What is the difference between an Escher sentence and a non sequitur?
A non-sequitur just doesn’t relate back to the current topic of discussion in any meaningful way.
An Escher sentence, as I understand it, sounds valid but doesn’t actually have any real meaning when you actually parse through it. A non-sequitur still has meaning as a sentence, it’s just off-topic.
Cheese is available.
This sentence is wrong.
This sentence is false don’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutitdon’tthinkaboutit
Technically correct is the best kind of correct
Like most sentences, this sentence has meaning in the right context. For example, imagine I told you beforehand that I owned people. Suddenly there is tons of meaning.
Out of context, most sentences also don’t have meaning. The lone sentences we do find meaning in have lots of bagaged context that is just assumed.
