The king of all Tongue Twisters

Maybe you didn’t believe me when I said that tones are important in Chinese language, so I have this tongue twister for you. I think this is the king of all tongue twisters.

Lion-eating poet in the stone den was written by Zhao Yua Ren to highlight the importance of Chinese characters. He wrote this 93 words long story, with all the words pronounced shi (in various tones), to prove that replacing Chinese characters with a phonetic script wouldn’t make sense. While this essay confirms the importance of characters in written Chinese, it also confirms the importance of tones in spoken Chinese.

施氏食狮史	Shī shì shí shī shǐ
石室诗士施氏	Shíshì shī shì shī shì,
嗜狮, 誓食十狮	Shì shī, shì shí shí shī.
氏时时适市视狮	Shì shíshí shì shì shì shī.
十时, 适十狮适市	Shí shí, shì shí shī shì shì.
是时, 适施氏适是市	Shì shí, shì shī shì shì shì shì.
氏视是十狮, 恃矢势,	Shì shì shì shí shī, shì shǐ shì,
使是十狮逝世	Shíshì shī shì shī shì,
氏拾是十狮尸, 适石室	Shì shi shì shí shī shī, shì shíshì.
石室湿, 氏使侍拭石室	Shíshì shī, shì shǐ shì shì shíshì.
石室拭, 氏始试食十狮尸	Shíshì shì, shì shǐ shì shí shí shī shī.
食时, 始识十狮尸,	Shí shí, shǐ shi shí shī shī,
实十石狮尸	Shí shí shíshī shī.
试释是事	Shì shì shì shì.

And here is the English translation

Lion-eating Poet

A poet named Shi who lived in a stone den was fond of lions and swore that he would eat ten lions. He constantly went to the market to look for ten lions. One day at ten o’clock, Shi went to the market and saw ten lions there. Using his arrows he killed the ten lions, and carried the dead lions back to his stone den. The stone den was damp, so Shi ordered his servants to wipe the stone den. When he tried to eat the ten lions, he realized that they were actually made of stones and tried to get rid of them.

Just in case you are wondering how this story sounds, here is a video

I hope that I have convinced you now. Can you imagine getting the tones wrong in the above story?

Chinese tongue twister

Like every other language, Chinese has tongue twisters too. But what makes Chinese tongue twisters more challenging is that you don’t have to worry only about pronunciation but also tones. Below is a good example.

Chinese	Pinyin	English
四是四	sì shì sì	4 is 4
十是十	shí shì shí	10 is 10
十四是十四	shí sì shì shí sì	14 is 14
四十是四十	sì shí shì sì shí	40 is 40
四十四是四十四	sì shí sì shì sì shí sì	44 is 44
四十四只石狮子是死的	sì shí sì zhǐ shí shīzi shì sǐ de	44 stone lions are dead

This is usually the first tongue twister taught in Chinese classrooms. It was definitely the first for me. I struggle with s and sh sounds and this tongue twister was a nightmare for me. Let me know how you find it.

And do you think you can do better than Jackie Chan?