...
In Chinese it is possible to compose a whole paragraph that consists of a string of homophones, as in the following oft-quoted example.
Shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi, shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi. Shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi shi. Shi shi shi shi.
To quote my Chinese colleague Zhang Zhi, who provided this passage,"When we Chinese hear this passage, we feel like being lost in the clouds."
When spoken, the passage, even with tone variations, is difficult to understand. When written as in Figure 5-1, this passage consisting of nothing but repetitions of shi transforms itself to a passage consisting of many different characters, and thanks to these varied characters the passage becomes decipherable and translatable into English.
Figure 5-1. A passage consisting of homophones of shi
A poet named Shi lived in a stone house and liked to eat lion flesh and he vowed to eat ten of them. He used to go to the market in search of lions and one day chanced to see ten of them there. Shi killed the lions with arrows and picked up their bodies carrying them back to his stone house. His house was dripping with water so he requested that his servants proceed to dry it. Then he began to try to eat the bodies of the ten lions. It was only then he realized that these were in fact ten lions made of stone. Try to explain the riddle.
Here is a conclusion to this chapter on how characters represent sounds. Throughout this book I describe Chinese characters as logographs that represent morphemes, their meanings primarily and directly and their sounds secondarily and indirectly. Although characters can indicate sounds by means of phonetic components, phonetic loans, and Fanqie ('cut and join'), these means are either inadequate or cumbersome, or both. Precisely because characters contain few reliable, simple, and direct clues to their sounds, several true phonetic scripts have been created to indicate the sounds of characters. One such script is Pinyin, the Roman alphabet, in China; another is Zhuyinfuhao or the National/Mandarin Phonetic Symbols, a script that is halfway between an alphabet and a syllabary, now used in Taiwan; two forms of Kana, a syllabary, in Japan; Han'gul, an alphabet used like a syllabary, in Korea. These phonetic scripts will be described in appropriate places.
<-Previous sample | Table of Contents | Next Sample->
