Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den
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The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den (simplified Chinese: 施氏食狮史; traditional Chinese: 施氏食獅史; pinyin: Shī Shì shí shī shǐ) is a famous example of constrained writing by Yuen Ren Chao which consists of 92 characters, all with the sound shi in different tones when read in Mandarin. The text, although written in Classical Chinese, can be easily comprehended by most educated readers. However, changes in pronunciation over 2,500 years resulted in a large degree of homophony in Classical Chinese, so the poem becomes completely incomprehensible when spoken out in Standard Mandarin or when written romanized in Standard Mandarin.
People's Republic of China linguists[who?] suggest that Yuen Ren Chao, as the leader who designed Gwoyeu Romatzyh, believed in romanization of Mandarin (which incorporates tones and foreign cognate spellings) but believed it suitable only for writing modern vernacular Chinese and not Classical Chinese.[citation needed] As a result, Classical Chinese should be abandoned and vernacular Chinese should be promoted. Other linguists, however, see the text as a demonstration of how absurd it could be when the Chinese language is romanized. It sometimes causes confusion rather than giving assistance for the learners.
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[edit] The text
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The following is the text in Hanyu Pinyin and Chinese characters. Pinyin orthography recommends writing numbers in Arabic numerals, so the number shí would be written as 10. To preserve the homophony in this case, the number 10 has also been spelled out in Pinyin.
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Meaning in English:
- « Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den »
- In a stone den was a poet Shi, who was a lion addict, and had resolved to eat ten.
- He often went to the market to look for lions.
- At ten o'clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market.
- At that time, Shi had just arrived at the market.
- He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die.
- He brought the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den.
- The stone den was damp. He asked his servants to wipe it.
- After the stone den was wiped, he tried to eat those ten lions.
- When he ate, he realized that those ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
- Try to explain this matter.
[edit] Explanation
Since the passage is written in Classical Chinese, homophony is not an issue. Classical Chinese is a written language and is very different from spoken Chinese. Different words that have the same sound when spoken aloud will have different written forms, comparable to deer and dear in English.
Also, many characters in the passage had distinct sounds in Middle Chinese. All the various Chinese spoken variants have over time merged and split different sounds. For example, when the same passage is read in Cantonese, there are seven distinct syllables - ci, sai, sap, sat, sek, si, sik - in six distinct tone contours, leaving 22 distinct morphemes. In Min Nan or Taiwanese, there are six distinct syllables - se, si, su, sek, sip, sit – in seven distinct tone contours, leaving 15 distinct morphemes. Even with Dioziu (Chaozhou/Teochew), there are eleven distinct syllables - ci, cik, sai, se, sek, si, sip, sik, chap, chiah, chioh - in six distinct tone contours, leaving 22 distinct morphemes. However, it is still debatable whether the passage is any more comprehensible when read aloud in other dialects than it is in Mandarin.
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In Cantonese, 48 of the story's 92 syllables are read si in one of six tones, 13 are read sik in one of two tones, 12 are read sap in one of two tones, 6 each are read sek or sat in one of two tones, 4 are read sai in one of two tones, and 3 are read ci in one of two tones.
[edit] Poem text in vernacular Chinese
While the sound changes merged sounds that had been distinct, new ways of speaking those concepts emerged. Typically disyllabic words replaced monosyllabic ones. If the same passage is translated into modern Mandarin, it will not be that confusing. The following is an example written in Vernacular Chinese, along with its pronunciations in Pinyin; Chinese characters (simp.) with pinyin transcription added using ruby annotations.
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| Chinese characters (trad.) | Chinese characters (simp.) | |
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《施氏吃獅子記》 有一位住在石室裏的詩人叫施氏，愛吃獅子，決心要吃十隻獅子。 |
《施氏吃狮子记》 有一位住在石室里的诗人叫施氏，爱吃狮子，决心要吃十只狮子。 |
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| Pinyin Transcription of the Vernacular Chinese | ||
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«Shī Shì chī shīzi jì» Yǒu yí wèi zhù zài shíshì lǐ de shīrén jiào Shī Shì, ài chī shīzi, juéxīn yào chī shí zhī shīzi. |
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[edit] Related tongue-twisters
In certain Southern Mandarin-speaking areas of China, speakers have a tongue-twister similar to The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den:
四是四，十是十，十四是十四，四十是四十.
This tongue-twister translates to "Four is four, ten is ten, fourteen is fourteen, forty is forty." In Standard Mandarin, it is pronounced as follows:
sì shì sì, shí shì shí， shísì shì shísì, sìshí shì sìshí.
In southern dialects of Mandarin, however, where speakers do not pronounce the retroflex consonant [ʂ] (sh) and instead replace it with [s], the tongue-twister is pronounced as follows, with all the syllables homophonous except for their tones:
sì sì sì, sí sì sí， sísì sì sísì, sìsí sì sìsí.
[edit] See also
- Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
- James while John had had had had had had had had had had had a better effect on the teacher
[edit] External links
- The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den has the source text and audio files of the text pronounced in Mandarin and Cantonese. (Note that the recordings in Mandarin carry marked accents e.g. many tones are wrongly pronounced and the place of articulation of the initial sh is too advanced. Serious learners of Mandarin are advised not to follow the pronunciations.)
- The Three "NOTs" of Hanyu Pinyin has a similar but different text, and it explains that the intention of Zhao Yuanren (Yuen Ren Chao) was not to oppose Chinese Romanization.
