Syntax Error

As I’ve said before, one of the hardest things about learning Chinese isn’t so much the pronunciation or the words, it’s the syntax, the sentence structure.  I’ve come across a good example to illustrate this.  Suppose you are at a bowling alley and want to ask someone “Do you have any heavier bowling balls?” Here’s how you say that in Chinese.

Yǒu méiyǒu zhòng yīdiǎnr de qiú?

Literally translated, word for word, this is:

“Have/not have heavy a little bit (possession) ball?”

The phrase yǒu méiyǒu means literally “have/not have” and it’s how you ask someone if they have something.  You follow yǒu méiyǒu with whatever the thing is you are inquiring about.  In essence you are saying “Do you have or do you not have a ______?” After that comes zhòng, meaning “heavy.” Next is yīdiǎnr, pronounced “ee-dee-arr,” which means “a little bit.” If someone asked you if you want a piece of cake and you want to say “just a little one” you can respond simply by saying yīdiǎnr.  Next is de, which is a particle added to other words to indicate possession of something.  The Chinese word for “me” is wǒ.  To create the word “mine” you simply add de to the end, indicating “me (possess)”.  Finally there is qiú meaning “ball.”

I read this in a Mandarin phrasebook at work the other day.  As an experiment I read the literal English translation, “Have/not have heavy a little bit (possession) ball?”, and asked some of the Chinese if they could figure out what I was saying.  None of them could even make a guess. 

My Chinese is slowly improving, but stuff like this is damn near impossible.