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How many measure words are there?
Measure words are very important in Chinese grammar as they are needed before every noun. There are more than a hundred Mandarin Chinese measure words, and the only way to learn them is by memorizing them. Whenever you learn a new noun, you should also learn its measure word.
What is the universal measure word?
只 – Zhī Just like个(gè) is a universal measure word for people, 只(zhī) is a universal measure word for animals. It can also refers to items the normally come in a pair (hands, or eyes for example.)
How many measure words are there in Chinese?
As we’ve mentioned, there are about 150 commonly used measure words in Chinese, but if you can master the 15 most important ones we’ve covered in this article, you’ll be well on your way to being a measure word expert!
What is the measure word for butter?
stick
For example, in the sentence “I have two sticks of butter,” the word “stick” is a measure word that indicates what kind of object “butter” is.
What is a measure word used for?
In linguistics, measure words are words (or morphemes) that are used in combination with a numeral to indicate an amount of something represented by some noun.
What languages use measure words?
It is also sometimes called a measure word or counter word. Classifiers play an important role in certain languages, especially East Asian languages, including Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese.
What is the Chinese measure word for food?
碗 wǎn
The 100 Most Common Chinese Measure Words
Hànzì | Pīnyīn | Used for: |
---|---|---|
双 | shuāng | pairs (of shoes, socks, chopsticks, etc.) |
件 | jiàn | clothes, events, things, etc. |
张 | zhāng | flat objects and sheets (bed, desk, paper, etc.); certain body parts (face, mouth) |
碗 | wǎn | measurement of food and drink (bowl) |
What is a measure word used for in Chinese?
The Chinese language uses measure words to count nouns. Unlike English and most European languages, Chinese does not distinguish between singular and plural, so nouns are simply abstract in number, with context determining whether something is singular or plural.
Does English have counter words?
They’re called uncountable nouns. Meaning, we cannot say, “one,” “two” or “three” directly before the noun, directly before the uncountable noun. The first counter word I want to talk about is “slice.” So, we use most of these counter words, for example, “slice,” followed by “of.” So, “slice of,” plus the noun.
What is the measure word for apple in Chinese?
gè
個/个 (gè; ge) – an apple; one apple = 一個蘋果/一个苹果 (yī gè píngguǒ; an/one + MW + apple). This measure word is also commonly referred to as a ‘generic’ measure word because you can use it in place of the measure word that you do not know when counting a specific noun.