Here are the links to the videos we watched with the older kids this week, to show the extent of how Chinese is a language built on homonyms!

There are lots of examples of Homonyms in English, ’There, their’, ‘two, too, to’, ‘buy, by’ etc. Words that sound the same but have different meanings.  But this happens much more in Chinese! 星星   猩猩 are both pronounced ‘xīng xing’, even have the same tone, but the first means ‘Star’ and the second means ‘Gorilla’.

Homonym in Chinese is 同音异义词   (tóng yīn yì yì cí) meaning ‘same sound different meaning word’.

To highlight this, we can use the poem in the The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den 施氏食狮史; Shī Shì shí shī shǐ; literally: “The Story of Mr. Shi Eating Lions”)  by Yuen Ren Chao.  Every syllable in this poem is pronounced shi!

Here is the poem with the Chinese characters (note characters are traditional, I will add the simplified version below)

Here is the poem read out with the English translation for you as it is read:

Here is the simplified character version:

《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。
食时，始识是十狮尸，实十石狮尸。
试释是事。

Here is the pinyin:

Have fun trying to recite 🙂