Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

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 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

The following is the text in Hanyu Pinyin, written according to the recommended orthography (which recommends writing numbers in Arabic numerals, so the number shí is written as 10).

« Shī Shì shí shī shǐ »

Shíshì shīshì Shī Shì, shì shī, shì shí 10 shī.

Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.

10 shí, shì 10 shī shì shì.

Shì shí, shì Shī Shì shì shì.

Shì shì shì 10 shī, shì shì shì, shǐ shì 10 shī shìshì.

Shì shí shì 10 shī shī, shì shíshì.

Shíshì shī, Shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.

Shíshì shì, Shì shǐ shì shí shì 10 shī.

Shí shí, shǐ shì shì 10 shī, shí 10 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.

Comment

So, how do Chinese speakers deal with so much homophony in actual speech? In fact, many characters in the passage had distinct sounds in Middle Chinese. Some distinctions are still preserved in other Chinese dialects.

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.

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.

• 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.