Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den

The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den (simplified Chinese: 施氏食狮史; traditional Chinese: 施氏食獅史; pinyin: Shī Shì shí shī shǐ; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: si sī si̍t sai sú; literally: ‘The Story of Mr. Shi Eating Lions’) is a passage composed of 92 characters written in Classical Chinese by linguist and poet Yuen Ren Chao (1892–1982), in which every syllable has the sound shi when read in modern Mandarin Chinese, with only the tones differing. Many characters in the passage had distinct sounds in Middle Chinese. For example, when the same passage is read in Cantonese (even modern Cantonese) there are seven distinct syllables—ci, sai, sap, sat, sek, si, sik—in six distinct tone contours, producing 22 distinct character pronunciations.

Source: en.wikipedia.org