I’ve discovered interesting Chinese version to the old Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo stuff I posted on almost a year ago.
Firstly, the most common Chinese languages that people have been exposed to in English-speaking countries are Mandarin or Cantonese. (I’ll skip over the debate about what counts as a language vs a dialect. Cantonese might not have a separate army/navy but I reckon it deserves the distinction of a language.) One thing I always found puzzling is how most people I ask think Mandarin sounds more “pleasant” to the lay ear than Cantonese.
I’ve always found the opposite, that Mandarin is a lot more bellowy. But it also has considerably less syllables. There are also a myriad ways of syllables that sound like “shi” (although actual speakers will distinguish between several kinds of “shi” sound). To the point that I (and some others) would do an impression of Mandarin where you just say “shi shi shi shi shi shi shi,” each one using a slightly different tone.
Well here’s a pleasant surprise — the above is true and you can speak just using “shi”. The reason being is that many syllables that were distinct in Classical and Middle Mandarin have converged so that in Modern Mandarin they are all pronounced as “shi”. Secondly most Chinese languages (Mandarin included) have a LOT of homophones. To the point that a single syllable (or even a single syllable of a single tone!) can stand for dozens of characters that mean different things. This feature means that in a certain [limited] sense, written Chinese is more precise than spoken Chinese. And I have heard that Chinese speakers will sometimes draw characters in the air with their finger during conversation if something gets too ambiguous. And the most common character is “shi”.
But the best part is that Yuen Ren Chao took advantage of this to video link) is of a poor woman trying to read the unreadable. And just to prove that it is a real poem (about a lion-eating poet), here it is. Traditional Chinese on the left, simplified on the right and you can see that the characters are all different.
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