Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

"Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" is a short narrative poem written in Literary Chinese that is composed of about 94 characters (depending on the specific version) in which every word is pronounced shi when read in modern Standard Chinese, a dialect based on the Mandarin Chinese spoken in Beijing, with only the tones differing.

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.

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.

Excerpt
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 orthography recommends writing Chinese numbers in Arabic numerals, so the number shí (十) would be written as 10. However, to preserve the homophony in this case, the number 10 has also been spelled out in Pinyin.


 * Pinyin:
 * Gwoyeu Romatzyh:
 * Traditional Chinese:
 * Simplified Chinese:
 * Translation: In a stone den was a poet with the family name Shi...

Explanation
The Chinese languages are tonal—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. 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.

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.

Utilizing this poem, Yuen Ren Chao aimed to highlight the challenges of translating the nuanced tones and homophones of Classical Chinese into a romanized script, potentially diminishing the language's depth and historical richness. This demonstration contrasts Classical Chinese's literary and formal tradition with the spoken vernacular languages of China, emphasizing the intrinsic value of the written Chinese language over attempts to phoneticize it for everyday use.

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.

Evolution
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—,, , , , , —in six distinct tone contours, producing 22 distinct character pronunciations. In Southern Min, there are six distinct syllables—,, , , , —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):
 * Hokkien (Pe̍h-ōe-jī):
 * Teochew (Peng'im):
 * Meixian Hakka (Guangdong Romanization):

Vernacular translation
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:
 * Simplified characters:
 * Pinyin: