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Non c'è tempo, il museo è chiuso!

Non c'è tempo, il museo è chiuso!
There is no time, the museum is closed!
From Lesson 18:There is / there are (c'è, ci sono)·Italian

Questions & Answers about Non c'è tempo, il museo è chiuso!

How do we say 'there is no' or 'there is not' in this sentence?
To make 'there is' negative, you simply put non right before c'è. Notice that Italian doesn't need an extra word for 'no' or 'any' here—the phrase non c'è handles the whole meaning.
What exactly does the apostrophe in c'è stand for?
It stands for a dropped letter i. The phrase is a combination of ci (there) and è (is). Because è starts with a vowel, Italian drops the i and replaces it with an apostrophe so the words flow together easily.
I thought tempo meant 'weather'. Why does it mean 'time' here?
The word tempo translates to both 'time' and 'weather' in Italian! You have to rely on the context of the sentence to know which one is meant. Since we are talking about a museum being closed, 'time' is the only translation that makes sense.
Why isn't there an article before tempo?
Just like in English where we say 'There is no time' rather than 'There is no the time', Italian often drops the article after c'è or non c'è when talking about a general, uncountable amount of something.
Why does chiuso end in -o?
Chiuso (closed) is an adjective that describes the noun il museo (the museum). Since museo is a masculine singular word, the adjective must match its gender and number by taking the masculine singular ending -o.

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