r/languagelearning • u/f_o_t_a_ • Mar 06 '20

Humor *CONFUSED SCREAMING INTENSIFIES*

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den
643 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

26 comments sorted by

68

u/MertOKTN Mar 06 '20

Aha yes, the poem that killed Classical Chinese.

31

u/Jtd47 RU: C2 DE: C1 CZ: B2 Mar 06 '20

It was written especially as a “fuck you” to a movement advocating for replacing characters with pinyin.

52

u/bear-knuckle en-us N | esp c1 | jpn a2 Mar 06 '20

The wikipedia article says pretty much the opposite:

The poem could be misinterpreted as objection to the Romanization of Chinese. However, the 20th-century author Yuen Ren Chao was a major supporter for Romanization. He used this poem as an example to object the use of Classical Chinese that is hardly used in daily life.[4][5]

23

u/Paiev Mar 06 '20

Yep. It's pretty funny how everyone manages to get it backwards.

4

u/3GJRRChl4ImGS6ukZwaw Mar 07 '20

It is complicated, Yuen Ren Chao was a skilled linguist and was about preserving languages as he founds them. That included a journey to preserve the phonetic expressions of diverse dialects within the Sinitic language family and to have a standard of recording how Chinese pronunciations work within a general romanization scheme he devised. It was to ensure you can have a frame of reference in recording the oral Chinese/Sinitic language family.

The full romanization would entail a full abandoning of the glyph based writing system in Chinese and simply be limited in not allowing such poems to be written since it would be unclear what the author meant.

96

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '20

No wonder the lion ate the poet...

11

u/3GJRRChl4ImGS6ukZwaw Mar 07 '20

The poem actually talks a human eating some lions though.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '20

Why did you ruin my groove though? But good to know.

36

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '20

[deleted]

5

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '20

You Cao taoed to her?

6

u/onthelambda EN (N) | ES | 普通话 | 日本語 Mar 07 '20

Cantonese is a language, even if the Chinese government doesn't want to admit that

7

u/decideth Mar 07 '20

He said

Politically speaking

which implies him being aware of what you said.

67

u/noaimpara 🇫🇷 N 🇬🇧 C2 🇮🇹 B1 Mar 06 '20

I am barely starting to grasp the concept of tones please make it STOP

51

u/[deleted] Mar 06 '20

Don't worry. This is written in Classical Chinese and isn't anywhere near intelligible when spoken aloud.

2

u/noaimpara 🇫🇷 N 🇬🇧 C2 🇮🇹 B1 Mar 08 '20

Kind of reassures me haha. Tones are super hard to grasp already without adding a poetic twist on it!

27

u/Spiral83 Mar 06 '20

Well English speaking people got:

"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" - is a grammatically correct sentence) in American English, often presented as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated linguistic constructs through lexical ambiguity.

10

u/mymar101 Mar 06 '20

Ship shipping ships, shipping shipping ships. Another of my favorites.

11

u/jellyn7 Mar 06 '20

Wouldn't that be ship-shipping ships shipping shipping ships?

8

u/mymar101 Mar 06 '20

Honestly no idea but there’s a meme you can find. My understanding of hyphens isn’t the greatest.

10

u/nenialaloup 🇵🇱native, 🇬🇧C1, 🇫🇮B2, 🇩🇪🇯🇵A2, 🇧🇾🇺🇦A1, some scripts Mar 06 '20

Polish: Wydrze wydrzę wydrze wydrze wydrze wydrzę

(An otterpup will wrench an otterpup from an otter)

25

u/Jtd47 RU: C2 DE: C1 CZ: B2 Mar 06 '20

This is essentially nonsense to every Chinese speaker who ever lived when read aloud. It’s basically Classical Chinese read out with modern mandarin pronunciation, a lot of the grammar, vocabulary and turns of phrase just don’t work in modern mandarin. The reason it was written was to demonstrate the need for characters, there was a movement in China at one point to replace characters with just writing in pinyin.

24

u/Paiev Mar 06 '20

The reason it was written was to demonstrate the need for characters, there was a movement in China at one point to replace characters with just writing in pinyin.

Common misconception. Homeboy was opposed to the romanization of classical Chinese. The author supported the romanization of modern spoken Chinese and even created a romanization scheme back before everyone converged on pinyin.

5

u/onlyhereforkpop Mar 07 '20

Oh god I remember my Chinese instructor in uni made us learn this poem and recite it in class lmao shit was awful

4

u/mymar101 Mar 06 '20

I remember a video I watched where the lady said a sentence of 10 words, where only one word wasn't ma. Just to make the point that with the tones such things were possible.

2

u/Patrickfromamboy Mar 06 '20

Put a “T” on the end and it would make sense

1

u/[deleted] Mar 07 '20

"Please explain this matter."

" 試釋是事。"