I attended a talk yesterday on the educated brain.  The speaker was trying to make the point that there are measurable, physiological changes associated with thinking.  Many of the studies he made were on ways in which the brain processes language.  He had to make certain points about the nuances of language, particularly Chinese.

He said that if you try to romanize a certain characters, they would all be spelled out as "shi".  He showed us an entire paragraph of "shi"s.  Then he showed us the equivalent in Chinese.  Every character was practially different.  The paragraph told a story of a boy who lived in a stone house.  He loved lion meat. He went out to the market and saw 10 lions.  With his bow and arrow, he shot the 10 lions and then took them back to his house.  When he returned to the house, he discovered that all the lions were made of stone.

Who knew that "shi" could mean so many things?