2007-01-20 03:16:06 · 4 answers · asked by QQ dri lu 4 in Society & Culture ➔ Languages
There are a lot of borrowed words in Mandarin:
麦克风- Maikefeng (Microphone)
Some people also do wordplay....
泰买书-Tai Mai Shu (tie my shoe) (lit. [It's]safe to buy a book)
海-Hai(HI!) (lit.sea/ocean)
2007-01-20 15:10:11 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
I don't think so, Chinese is based off a pictorial alphabet and English is based of a phonetic alphabet. English uses symbols to represent sounds while Chinese uses symbols to represent things.
2007-01-20 11:20:58 · answer #2 · answered by Draco Paladin 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
what you are talking about is called transliteration.
This approximates sounds of one lanuage into another. It is not near a perfect match (for Example, Mike becomes MaiKe (pronuced MyKe).
Generally, transliteration is just used for proper nouns in the second language (in this case, english).
2007-01-20 13:06:18 · answer #3 · answered by mike i 4 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I guess you can. It would not translate word for word though.
2007-01-20 11:19:57 · answer #4 · answered by ihaveissues 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋