| Measure words are words used to quantify nouns. That might sound complicated at first, but the function of these words quickly becomes clear when we examine how they’re used in English. Although most English speakers may not have heard the term “measure words,” these words are actually relatively common in English. In fact, most people understand how to use them intuitively. Words like “pair” and “piece” are English measure words. Whenever you say common phrases like “a pair of pants” or “three pieces of bread,” you’re employing English measure words like a pro! Nouns like “pants” and “bread” sound odd without measure words. We wouldn’t normally say “three breads” or “a pants.” However, there are many other English nouns, like “house” or “cat,” that don’t take any measure words. Phrases like “a house” or “three cats” sound perfectly natural.  Measure words in Chinese Measure words in Chinese are similar to those used in English, except easier! While English speakers have to decide whether or not it’s necessary to use a measure word with each noun they encounter, there’s usually no such question in Chinese. Chinese proper nouns (think names of people or names of countries) don’t need measure words, but every other Chinese noun needs to be accompanied by one. In Chinese, simple phrases like “a car,” “two cats” or “three buildings” must be paired with a measure word. How are Chinese measure words used? Employ the following structure to use Chinese measure words correctly: Number + Measure Word + Noun Imagine that you want to say “a person” in Chinese. To do so, you'll need to utilize the correct vocabulary words and follow the above structure to create your phrase. “Person” in Chinese is 人 (rén). The measure word that goes with person is 个 (gè), and since you’re talking about a single person, you’ll need the Chinese word for one, which is 一 (yī). Thus, your phrase would read: 一个人 (yī gè rén; one person). Now let’s say you want to make your phrase plural. In English, you’d either add an ‘s’ to the noun or use its irregular plural form, which in the case of “person” is “people.” Your correct plural English phrase would read, “two people.” Luckily, Chinese nouns don’t have a special plural form. They stay the same no matter whether they’re plural or singular. To create the Chinese equivalent of the English phrase “two people,” you simply need to replace the Chinese number one (一 yī) with the Chinese number two (两 liǎng) to form the phrase 两个人 (liǎng gè rén; two people). Different types of nouns, different types of Chinese measure words What happens if you want to translate a more complex English phrase that contains an English measure word, like “a piece of cake”? In this sentence, the English measure word is “piece.” To translate it into Chinese, we must first identify the noun, which is “cake,” or 蛋糕 (dàngāo) in Chinese. Next, we need to know the specific Chinese measure word that goes with 蛋糕 (dàngāo), which is 块 (kuài). If we want to talk about one piece, we’d also need the Chinese word for “one,” which is 一 yī. After plugging these words into the number + measure word + noun construction above, our Chinese phrase would read 一块蛋糕 (yī kuài dàngāo; one piece of cake). If we had two pieces of cake, then we’d write 两块蛋糕 (liǎng kuài dàngāo; two pieces of cake). Note that in English, measure words are generally used with articles like “a” and the preposition “of.” These are unnecessary in Chinese, however |
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