If you had ever thought that She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore was difficult – consider a puzzle in the style of Carroll –

Chinese is already confusing enough with all of its tones, characters, markers and lack of articles, inflections and tenses, but this poem really shows just how difficult Chinese is especially for the native Mandarin.

A Chinese author, 趙元任, expressed the puzzle in this way:

漢語		English
施氏食狮史 石室诗士施氏， 嗜狮， 誓食十狮。 氏时时适市视狮。 十时，适十狮适市。 是时，适施氏适市。 氏视是十狮，恃矢势， 使是十狮逝世。 氏拾是十狮尸，适石室。 石室湿，氏使侍拭石室。 石室拭，氏始试食是十狮尸。 食时，始识是十狮， 实十石狮尸。 试释是事。		Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den In a stone den lived a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict. He had resolved to eat ten lions. He often went to the market to look for lions. At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market. At that same time, Shi Shi arrived at the market. He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die. He took the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den. The stone den was damp, so he asked his servants to dry it. After the stone den had been wiped dry, he tried to eat those ten lions. When he ate, he realized that the ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses. Try to explain this matter.

Coco thought you might like to hear Google read the words for you in languages that either still use Hanzi (漢字) or have only recently adopted other forms of writing.

Empty block

Coco cannot explain it, but a useful discussion of the purpose of the puzzle may still be found here: pinyin.info

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