Chinese Measure Words
So this is one of the first things that you start to learn after getting into chinese – “measure words.” It’s basically a classifier that you should add onto a lot of nouns.
Image courtesy of this article on chinese medicine
Personally, one of the main things I’ve noticed in 8 months of studying is how many words there are with the same sound. Ie. There are more than 100 words with the sound “shi“ I would guess that using measure words helps to narrow it down a bit! I particularly have trouble remembering another common sound in chinese “ji”. On top of hearing the word, then you’ve got got to try and determine the tone, then hopefully you’ve got the meaning. It can be laborious at times.
Below is an image from a handout in my class, with some descriptions of how measure words work in Chinese and some examples.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
