Chinese learning English before pinyin....

[mph]

I have been trying to locate oldish books that target Mandarin Chinese speakers learning English. The texts I am after would most likely have been published pre 1960s and be well out of print.

In these books the English word sounds were written in Chinese characters.

For example to sound out "thankyou" the characters were ...

三塊肉

To say thankyou the Mandarin speaker would sound out "san1 kuai4 rou4".

Following on the characters for "thankyou very much" were

三塊肉給你馬吃

san kuai row gei ne ma chi

A friend saw such a book in a Taibei book shop about 40 years ago and enjoyed reading it so much that he completely forgot to purchase a copy. He regrets it to this day. Sadly the "thankyou very much" example was the only one he could remember.

Any hint in locating any of these types of books would be greatly appreciated.

mph