Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

Template:Short description Template:Infobox Chinese "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" is a short narrative poem written in Literary Chinese, composed of around 92 to 94 characters (depending on the specific version) in which every word is pronounced shi (Template:IPAc-cmn) when read in modern Standard Chinese, with only the tones differing.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The poem was written in the 1930s by the Chinese linguist Yuen Ren Chao as a linguistic demonstration. The poem is coherent and grammatical in Literary Chinese, but due to the number of Chinese homophones, it becomes difficult to understand in oral speech. In Mandarin, the poem is incomprehensible when read aloud, since only four syllables cover all the words of the poem. The poem is somewhat more comprehensible when read in other varieties such as Cantonese, in which it has 22 different syllables, or Hokkien, in which it has 15 different syllables. Yuen Ren Chao would go on to produce "Ji Ji hit the Chicken" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}; jì jī jī jī jì) in "Chinese culture in a Comparative perspective" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}) the same year, instead using the syllable /ji/.

The poem is an example of a one-syllable article, a form of constrained writing possible in tonal languages such as Mandarin Chinese, where tonal contours expand the range of meaning for a single syllable.

ExcerptEdit

The following is the first six characters of the text in Hanyu Pinyin, Gwoyeu Romatzyh (Chao's own romanization system), and Chinese traditional/simplified characters.

Pinyin: Template:Tlit
Gwoyeu Romatzyh: Template:Tlit
Traditional Chinese: Template:Zhi
Simplified Chinese: Template:Zhi
Translation: In a stone den was a poet with the family name Shi...<ref>Chao, Yuen Ren. Chinese Linguistics: A Chapter from the History of Oriental Studies in the United States, 1840-1940. Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1974. https://digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu/rohoia/ucb/text/chineselinguistph00chaorich.pdf).</ref>

ExplanationEdit

The Chinese languages are tonal Template:Ndash meaning that changes in pitch can change the meaning of words. When written using a romanized script, the poem is an example of Chinese antanaclasis.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> The poem shows the flexibility of the Chinese language in many ways, including wording, syntax, punctuation, and sentence structures, which gives rise to various explanations.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

The poem can be interpreted as an objection to the romanization of Chinese, demonstrating the author's critique of proposals to replace Chinese characters with Latin letters—a move that could potentially lead to the marginalization or elimination of traditional Chinese script. The 20th-century linguist Yuen Ren Chao utilized this poem to illustrate the complexities and unique attributes of the Chinese language, arguing that simplification and romanization would undermine its rich tonal and logographic system.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Yuen Ren Chao's poem illustrates the difficulty of translating the nuanced tones and homophones of Classical Chinese into a romanized script. It contrasts Classical Chinese's literary and formal tradition with the spoken vernacular languages of China, and in doing so implies that attempts to phoneticize the written Chinese language for easier usage may cause it to lose some of its representational capacity.<ref name=":2" />

The written poem is easy to understand for those familiar with Chinese characters, each of which is associated with a distinct core meaning. It remains intelligible in its spoken form in varieties of Chinese other than Mandarin. However, in its romanized form or when spoken in Mandarin, it becomes confusing.<ref name=":2" />

EvolutionEdit

{{ safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst||date=__DATE__ |$B= {{ safesubst:#invoke:Unsubst||date=__DATE__ |$B= Template:Ambox }} }} The loss of older sound combinations in Chinese over the centuries has greatly increased the number of Chinese homophones. Many words in the passage had distinct sounds in Middle Chinese, but over time, all of the varieties of Chinese have merged and split different sounds. For example, when the same passage is read in Cantonese there are seven distinct syllables—Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit—in six distinct tone contours, producing 22 distinct character pronunciations. In Southern Min, there are six distinct syllables—Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit, Template:Tlit—in seven distinct tone contours, producing fifteen character pronunciations. Therefore, the passage is barely comprehensible when read aloud in modern Mandarin without context, but easier to understand when read in other Sinitic languages, such as Cantonese.

The same excerpt in other dialects:

Cantonese (Jyutping): Template:Tlit
Hokkien (Pe̍h-ōe-jī): Template:Tlit
Teochew (Peng'im): Template:Tlit
Meixian Hakka (Guangdong Romanization): Template:Tlit

Vernacular translationEdit

As sound changes over the years merged characters that had different pronunciations, new ways of speaking those concepts emerged. Often, disyllabic words would replace monosyllabic ones. As such, if the same excerpt from Chao's original poem is translated into modern Mandarin, it will not sound as confusing.

The same excerpt written in vernacular Chinese, along with its Pinyin pronunciation:

Traditional characters: Template:Zhi
Simplified characters: Template:Zhi
Pinyin: Template:Tlit

ReferencesEdit

Template:Reflist

External linksEdit

The Three "NOTs" of Hanyu Pinyin has a similar but different text