My C is a little more than rusty at the moment, so I\'m failing to create something I think should be pretty basic.
Allow me to refer to character arrays as strings
Note that your examples show arrays of pointers. If you want arrays of arrays (multidimensional arrays) specify all the sizes in the array definition.
char sentences[500][42]; /* sentences is an array of 500 elements.
** each element is itself an array
** capable of holding strings up to length 41 */