This is almost certainly written in literary classical Chinese (even if written recently). Basically, in Chinese, words that were once pronounced differently merged in pronunciation in modern Mandarin, though since the writing system is quite divorced from sound, the written forms never changed (at least, not until Simplified Chinese under Mao).<p>What that means is that a <i>lot</i> of classical Chinese literature has a bit of this problem, in that if you read it aloud, it is tricky to fully comprehend. (This poem/story takes it to an extreme, obviously.) For a long time, up through the early 20th century, it was fairly common for written things to be written in this literary Chinese even if the writer would <i>say</i> their ideas completely differently. A "write as you speak" movement has largely changed that: in modern written Mandarin, many words are two or three syllables long, and written with two or three characters. Etymologically, the words may have derived from compounding monosyllabic words, but in the modern spoken (and now also written) language, the sub-word syllables are simply no longer words in any meaningful sense.<p>(An analogy on a much smaller scale in English: many dialects of English merge /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ before a nasal sound, so that "pin" and "pen" sound identical. Speakers of those dialects will often <i>say</i> "straight pin" or "ink pen" (or "pig pen" or "cow pen") to distinguish which kind of pin/pen they mean; they may or may not make the distinction in writing. So the writing is unambiguous, the speaking is unambiguous, but reading a written thing <i>is</i> ambiguous. When it's just one or two words it's no big deal, but imagine that nearly every word suffered from that problem....)<p>EDIT: It turns out there's a Wikipedia page on the poem (naturally, should've checked that first). A lot of this is covered there: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_D...</a>
The overloading of the shi sound in mandarin approaches absurd levels.<p>I've always liked:<p>四 是 四 ， 十 是 十 ， 十 四 是 十 四 ， 四 十 是 四 十 ， 四 十 四 只 石 狮 子 是 死 的
sì shì sì
shí shì shí
shí sì shì shí sì
sì shí shì sì shí
sì shí sì zhī shí shī zǐ shì sǐ de.
Translation: 4 is 4, 10 is 10, 14 is 14, 40 is 40, 44 small stones are dead<p>Then get a southerner with say a Sichuan or yunnan accent to say this (in mandarin). They cannot properly pronounce shi (they say it like si). The above just sounds like an angry bee. Given that shi and si is used a lot this becomes a real pain for a non native speaker.<p>Makes this tough when you're buying something that is 44 rmb and you cant tell whether they said "is 14" or "44" or what.
Here's the wikipedia entry on this poem along with the audio.<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_D...</a>
NPR just had a story about this<p><a href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129552512" rel="nofollow">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1295525...</a>
the number after the word only indicates what tone it is.
always good to review which tone is which :<p>shi1 = shī<p>shi2 = shí<p>shi3 = shǐ<p>shi4 = shì
Its an amusing one because its easier for foreigners learning mandarin to say then cantonese speaking chinese who then learn mandarin to say.<p>In my chinese class in the north they just it as a way of testing southern chinese ability at speaking mandarin.
I've asked a few Japanese people to say "She sells sea shells by the sea shore..." and it comes out sounding a lot like that... Tricky because Japanese uses Shi and Chi sounds but not Si on its own.<p>Don't worry, they get plenty of revenge on me.
I like to use this dictionary to check pronunciation, meaning and stroke order:<p><a href="http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&wdrst=0&wdqb=chi" rel="nofollow">http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=worddict&...</a>
Not exactly a tongue twister, but here's something similar from Korean: 가가가가가? (gagagagaga?)<p>In the Southeastern (Gyeongsangdo) dialect of Korean, this means "Does he have the surname 'Ga' ?"
"This thread is useless without" mp3s. In all seriousness, I'd love if it somebody took a crack at this because I'd love to hear it. (And I'm sure the karma would flow.)