Malay: Aku aku aku aku
English: I admit that I am myself.
What are these type of things called? And surely, there must be other oddities in the other 6000 or more of the world’s languages. Give me more.
I recently drew a picture (which I would like to paint). It showed a painter painting a picture of himself combing his hair.
The caption is Ils se peignent (They are combing/painting themselves); the verbs peindre (to paint) and peigner (to comb) have identical third-person plural present indicative in French.
I once saw a wonderful cartoon with a cat performing actions, all of which were homonymous with vegetables in French, and wearing clothes the same colour as the vegetable. Such as:
nous oignons (we anoint; oignons = onions);
je radie (I expel/delete; radis = radish);
où cours-je? (where am I running?; courge = squash).
Hebrew - Isha na’alah na’alah na’alah, na’alah et hadelet bifnei ba’alah
Which means - a noble (na’alah) woman put on (na’alah) her shoe (na’alah) and locked (na’ala) the door in her husband’s face…
There’s also a word in Hebrew - composed only of four letter waw-s - that means “and his hook”. This is made possible by the fact that the letter waw in Hebrew can be both a consonant and a vowel. The word is pronounced Uvavo BTW, not that it matters…
Dani
Apologies - I don’t know much Spanish, but this is one of my husband’s favorites (he’s the one to bring it to my attention). I doubt the spellings are correct.
Spanish: No nage nage porque no traje traje.
English: I cannot swim because I didn’t bring my bathing suit.
Maybe someone will be along to correct the Spanish.
Snicks
“John, while James had had ‘had’, had had ‘had had’ ‘Had had’ had been the correct choice.” 
One of my teachers in high school introduced us to a situation where an English sentence could use the same word five times, one right after the other, and still be gramatically correct.
Imagine that Messers Smith and Jones, esquires, ordered a set of business cards for their law firm. The printer made a mistake, however, and the text of the cards read: “SmithandJones”. Naturally, a letter would be dispatched to the printer with the following message.
“You neglected to insert spaces between ‘Smith’ and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and ‘Jones.’”
“I admit that I am myself.”
What am I missing? Something to do with the word “admit” I’m sure, but I don’t get it.
I cannot swim would be “No puedo nadar” and bathing suit is “traje de baño”
There’s also “Vino con el vino” (He/she came with the wine). To believe (creer) and to create (crear) have a few identical forms as do “to sit down” (sentarse) and “to feel” (sentirse)… not sure what to do with those…
I don’t know if this fits what the OP is looking for exactly, but my Spanish teacher told us this joke when we were learning how to use pronouns. I couldn’t remember it, so I found a similar one here. My best attempt at translation:
There are two sailors, one French, the other Spanish, that work on a cruise ship. A lot of passengers usually work out on the deck in the morning, and one day the two friends see a beautiful woman running on the deck. They can’t take their eyes away from this gorgeous woman. Suddenly, there’s a strong gust of wind, and her skirt flies up, giving the sailors a spectacular view of her ass. The two watch this little scene with interest, but without saying a word. After a moment, the French sailor sighs and kisses his fingers, saying “Ah, c,est la vi.” [Ah, such is life] To which the Spaniard replies, “Sí, ¡yo se la vi también!” [Yeah! I saw it too!]
Because they’re pronounced the same, you see.
Ed edited it.
You’re missing that this is the English translation of the Malay statement in the OP.
In Tagalog, this is a valid conversation:
Person 1: “Bababa ba?”
Person 2: “Bababa!”
Rough English translation:
Person 1: “Is this going down?” [Like on an elevator.]
Person 2: “It’s going down!”
That one only works if you ignore accents. “he/she came” is vinó.
My favorite is “telya telya telya telya telya”- because of its own nature, confusion twists around itself. I can’t remember what language this is in, though.
Foggy childhood memory, but I think there’s one in German that goes:
(When flies fly behind flies, flies are flying after flies.)
And a great one reported by Stephen Fry, seven prepositions in a row. Imagine a small child at bedtime who asks his mother to go downstairs for a storybook to read to him. She returns with a book about Australia. Horrified, the lad cries:
No nadé nada porque no traje traje.
There’s no accent for vino (he/she came). The last syllable is not stressed, it is prounounced the same as vino (wine).
buffalo - [v] to confuse; bewilder; over-awe
Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.
I’m not sure if buffalo from Buffalo do indeed buffalo buffalo from Buffalo, or whether there actually are buffalo from Buffalo, but nevertheless, the sentence is grammatically correct.
¿Qué hace el pez?
Nada.
Some more from Tagalog:
Kakabakaba ka ba?
Trans: Are you (being) scared?
Di maaaring ariin ang pag-aari ng magmamay-ari.
[The double and triple vowels are not typos. Each is pronounced as a distinct syllable.]
Trans: It’s impossible to fix the owner’s things.
I love this one. (Though it’s worth mentioning that if you’re allowed quotes you can form a grammatical sentance with as many ands as you like: “Smith said ‘And and and and and and and and’.”)
My favorite is that any number of copies of the word ‘fish’ form a gramatical (if fairly vacuous) sentance. To elucidate the construction I’ll use fish for the noun, fish for the transitive verb and fish for the intransitive verb.
Fish!
Fish fish.
Fish fish Fish.
Fish fish fish fish. (ie. Fish that (other) fish fish, fish (even other) fish)
Fish fish fish fish Fish.
.
.
.
And then there are the “garden path” sentences: sentences that look bizarre but are in fact grammatically correct, such as:
The horse raced past the barn fell.
and
Fat people eat accumulates.
Those are certainly grammatically correct, but are they supposed to mean anything? I’m sure that there are any number of meaningless statements in any language that are grammatically correct.
Sure they mean something.
The horse [that was] raced past the barn fell [down].
[The] fat [that] people eat accumulates [in the body].