Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den
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The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den (Traditional Chinese: ; pinyin: ) is a famous example of constrained writing by Zhao Yuanren which consists of 92 characters, all with the sound shi in different tones when read in Mandarin. The text, which is written in Classical Chinese, is easily comprehensible when read by classically trained readers. Changes in pronunciation over 2,500 years resulted in a large degree of homophony in Classical Chinese, however, so the poem becomes completely incomprehensible to just about anyone when spoken out loud in Putonghua or when romanized.
It is commonly believed that in writing the essay, Zhao was attempting to argue the absurdity of Romanizing Chinese. However, linguists point out that Zhao Yuanren was the leader of the group that designed Gwoyeu Romatzyh, a romanization of Mandarin that incorporates tones and foreign cognate spellings (in other words, a fully independent script). He knew that it could only be used to write modern vernacular Chinese and not Classical Chinese. He was only demonstrating the point that the Chinese should write in vernacular Chinese and abandon Classical Chinese.
The text
[Click here to listen to the text]The following is the text in Hanyu Pinyin. Hanyu 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.
- « Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »
- Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
- Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
- Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
- Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.
- Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì, shǐ shì shí shī shìshì.
- Shì shí shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
- Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
- Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì shí shī.
- Shí shí, shǐ shí shì shí shī, shí shí shí shī shī.
- Shì shì shì shì.
- « Si--sī Si̍t-si Sú »
- Se̍k-sek si-sū Si--sī, sī su, sè si̍t si̍p-su.
- Sī sî-sî sek-sī sī-su.
- Si̍p-sî, sek si̍p-su sek-sī.
- Sī-sî, sek si--sī sek-sī.
- Sī sī sī si̍p-su, sī sí sè, sú sī si̍p-su sè-sè.
- Sī si̍p sī si̍p su-si, sek se̍k-sek.
- Se̍k-sek sip, sī sú sī sit se̍k-sek.
- Se̍k-sek sit, sī sí sì si̍t sī si̍p-su.
- Si̍t-sî, sí sek sī si̍p-su, si̍t si̍p se̍k-su-si.
- Sī sek sī-su.
- 《施氏食獅史》
- In a stone den was a poet Shi Shi, who loved to eat lions, and decided to eat ten.
- He often went to the market to look for lions.
- One day at ten o'clock, ten lions just arrived at the market.
- At that time, Shi Shi just arrived at the market too.
- Seeing those ten lions, he killed them with arrows.
- 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.
Explanation
So, how do Chinese speakers deal with so much homophony in actual speech? 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 meet and meat 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 Min Nan or Taiwanese, there are at least six distinct syllables — se, si, su, sek, sip, sit – in seven distinct tone contours, and in Cantonese, there are seven distinct syllables — sek, sat, si, sai, sik, sap, ci — in six distinct tone contours. However, whether that will make the passage comprehensible is still debatable.
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.
Poem Text in Vernacular Chinese
Chinese characters (simp.) with pinyin transcription added using ruby annotations.
|
《
| ||
| Chinese characters (trad.) | Chinese characters (simp.) | |
|---|---|---|
|
《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。 | |
| Pinyin Transcription of the Vernacular Chinese | ||
|
« Shī Shì chī shīzi jì »
Yǒu yi wèi zhù zài shíshì lǐ de shīrén jiào Shī Shì, ài chī shīzi, juéxīn yào chī 10 zhi shīzi.
| ||
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.
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