What happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object?

This set of words, commonly believed to be a question, has been 'posed' in many languages through the years.

Are you saying 'huh?'

I have been interested in 'language' for many years (even though I failed my University English entrance exam early this year (1979), and was told by my remedial English teacher in early December that he would give me a C on the course if I promised to NEVER write again.)

I took Linguistics and Greek in University.

The following was originally penned by me in 1979, in 1st year University, after listening to my linguistics professor:

If I say:

Tom this tank tempo temporary tin temperature

Is that English? No! It is a bunch of English words written on a line. Well:

What happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object?

Is another bunch of English words with a punctuation mark thrown in at the end.

I can hear you saying: Not it is not, it is a philosophical question, or at least saying "no, it is an English question."

But what defines an English sentence? Is it simply that it has English words put together grammatically correct? No! Consider this:

"What is the color fast?"

That could be argued as grammatically correct, but, unless you have an unusual 'condition', you know there is no color 'fast'. So you can conclude that that is not an English question, it is a bunch of English words with a punctuation mark thrown in at the end. Because the word 'color' (or colour in some countries including mine) has a specific meaning, and 'fast' has a specific meaning, you cannot combine them together in this way. Even a grade 1 English student KNOWS that "What is the color fast?" is NOT English (or 'bad' English if you want a softer way of saying the same thing.)

So now look at the collection of English things:

What happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object?

You would have NO problem saying that the following is gibberish ("not English")

What unmovable when object happens an? meets irresistible force an

even though it has all the same elements as "What happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object?"

So, in the same way that you can't combine the word 'color' with 'fast' as a comparison, the definition of the words 'irresistible" and 'unmovable" cannot be combined, because of the meanings, in the following way and still be "English":

What happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object?

So, it turns out that "What happens when an irresistible force meets an unmovable object?" only looks like an English question, but in reality, it is just a bunch of words thrown together with some punctuation that makes it initially appear to be an English question - but upon considering the meaning of all the words, is clearly NOT an English sentence. It is gibberish.

So why has his question consumed so much mental thought through the millennium? Because the people asking don't understand how language, science or logic work. Sadly, all those people in the newspapers the last about 10 years who claim to be scientists and say we are entering a global ice age due to automobile pollution appear to have the same disregard for science, logic and language when I look at their data and their conclusions. By concentrating on their claim that we are causing a global ice age, I think they are sadly diverting attention away from the real pollution problems that should be solved.

But let me end this with positive news: It appears that the recent banning of CFC's (chlorofluorocarbons) will likely become a major phenomenon. Hopefully most use of CFC will be banned in the next few years - it looks like the political will is there to continue moving in that direction. If so, it looks like it will soon stop the depletion of the ozone layer - sadly it will apparently still keep depleting for a few more years after even a complete ban as the CFC's 'get up there' - but if we are lucky, we caught this REAL problem in time and the damage will stop, and maybe even start to reverse by the new millennium.