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Even accounting for tonally differentiated words, Mandarin Chinese is rife with exact homophones. Shì can be “is,” “try,” “thing,” “kind/style” and many more. I
by eloisius 5y ago
Even accounting for tonally differentiated words, Mandarin Chinese is rife with exact homophones. Shì can be “is,” “try,” “thing,” “kind/style” and many more. It amazes me how we are able to pattern match so well provided a little context.
- dwheeler 5y agoIndeed. For an extreme example, "Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den" is a short poem in Classical Chinese in which every word is pronounced shi when read in present-day Standard Mandarin, with only the tones differing: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Ston...