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Guide to Chinese Language and Culture

"Lion-Eating Poet" Tongue-Twister Essay

While tongue-twisters in all languages take advantage of similar sounding words and syllables to generate confusion, some Chinese tongue-twisters also take advantage of the fact that Chinese is a tonal language. Taken to the extreme, it is possible to create a tongue-twisters where all the words have the same sound but varying only in their tones. Zhao Yuanren (趙元任) (1892-1982), an accomplished Chinese linguist, created just such an essay. He did so to prove just how inadequate it would be to replace Chinese characters by a purely phonetic script as others were advocating at the time.

The beauty of this essay is that although the romanized version is utterly ridiculous, its Chinese character version is perfectly clear and its content totally interesting. However, it is up to you to find out whether a native Chinese speaker hearing the essay for the first time could correctly parse it when read by another native Chinese speaker.
施氏食獅史 shi1 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi3 Story of Shi Eating the Lions
石室詩士施氏, shi2 shi4 shi1 shi4 shi1 shi4, A poet named Shi lived in a stone room,
嗜獅,誓食十獅. shi4 shi1, shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1. fond of lions, he swore that he would eat ten lions.
氏時時適市視獅. shi4 shi2 shi2 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi1. He constantly went to the market to look for ten lions.
十時,適十獅適市. shi2 shi2, shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4. At ten o'clock, ten lions came to the market
是時，適施氏適是市. shi4 shi2, shi4 shi1 shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4. and Shi went to the market.
氏視是十獅,恃矢勢, shi4 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi1, shi4 shi3 shi4, Looking at the ten lions, he relied on his arrows
使是十獅逝世. shi3 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi4 shi4. to cause the ten lions to pass away.
氏拾是十獅屍, 適石室. shi4 shi2 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi1, shi4 shi2 shi4. Shi picked up the corpses of the ten lions and took them to his stone room.
石室濕， 氏使侍拭石室. shi2 shi4, shi1, shi4 shi3 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi4. The stone room was damp. Shi ordered a servant to wipe the stone room.
石室拭，氏始試食十獅屍. shi2 shi4 shi4, shi4 shi3 shi4 shi2 shi2 shi1 shi1. As the stone den was being wiped, Shi began to try to eat the meat of the ten lions.
食時, 始識十獅屍, shi2 shi2, shi3 shi4 shi4 shi2 shi1 shi1, At the time of the meal, he began to realize that the ten lion corpses
實十石獅屍. shi2 shi2 shi2 shi1 shi1. were in fact were ten stone lions.

試釋是事.

shi4 shi4 shi4 shi4

 Try to explain this matter.
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