User:Pmanderson/niwa

The phrase in Japanese niwa niwa niwa tori ga iru (にわにはにわとりがいる）is a Japanese tongue-twister (早口言葉) that takes advantage of Japanese homophones.

When written in hiragana, the "にわ" and "には" are both pronouned identically as niwa.

The sentence would be read aloud as Niwa ni wa niwatori ga iru which would mean "In the garden there are two chickens". However the meaning of the sentence would sound ambiguous or strange because of the repetitious niwa phrase.

If the spoken sentence was written into standard Japanese such that the meaning was conveyed with no attempt to use visual word play it would be written "庭には二羽鶏が居る. " In this case the sentence can be read purely for logographic meaning with absolutely no ambiguity in the meaning.

The phrase can be expanded to Uraniwa niwa niwa, niwa niwa niwa niwatori ga iru which in hiragana is written 'うらにわ にはにわ、にわにはにわにわとりがいる' and in standard Japanese is written '裏庭には二羽、庭には二羽鶏が居る. ' and translates into English as 'In the back garden there are two [and] in the front garden there are [also] two chickens."

The phrase could also be extended to "Niwa no niwa niwa, niwa niwatori wa niwakani wani wo tabeta", written in Japanese as '丹羽の庭には二羽鶏は俄に鰐を食べた'. The phrase means "In Niwa's garden two chickens suddenly ate an alligator".