Translated from and into Chinese: Yes, no, no more already, author, photographer and speaker

You go into a shop and ask for an item which you saw on sale last week.
The shop assistant replies in English:
'Don't have. No more, already.'

I decided to translate this with google translate, in case the sentence was a simple, commonly used, easy to remember, Chinese.

I wrote out the English, then looked at the Chinese, and divided it into component parts. Where English has syllables, Chinese has mostly two syllable words. One syllable fits inside a square. Two syllables fit inside a square by leaving them the same height but halving the width, which tells you that the two words are pronounced together, like an English word with suffixes.

The results I saw were:
Yes
No / don't have
Have
no more
already


是 没有 有 不再 已经

Shì
méiyǒu
yǒu
bù zài
yǐjīng

The word for yes sound like sher, to my mind similar to sure.

The word for no sounds to me like 'may yoh'. No and no have and don't have are the same.

This is great news. I can now listen to shop assistants and hotel receptionists talking to each other. I will be able to recognize yes and no and if they are speaking in Chinese (Mandarin).

About the Author

•关于

•的

•作者

•

•旅行 作家

Angela Lansbury,

 travel writer 

旅游作家

and  -•

•hé

和

photographer, 

shèyǐng jiā

author 

作者
Zuòzhě

and 

和

•

•hé

photographer 摄影家

shèyǐng jiā

and 

和

•

•hé

speaker -扬声器 •yángshēngqì

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