Measure word
From Carls wiki
Initially, I thought that the measure words in Chinese were broken — I viewed them as nothing more than "gendered articles on steroids" — but I'm seeing more and more advantages of having them around. Here are some:
- They introduce a bit of redundancy, a thankful occurrence in the otherwise terse Chinese.
- They help specify what exactly is referred to. In English, "this wine" can mean, "this bottle of wine" or "this type of wine". Chinese has one measure word for "bottle" (瓶 píng) and one for "type" (種 zhǒng).
- They often give a hint about the shape of the noun described.
- Once a noun is mentioned (along with its corresponding measure word), later mentions need only refer back to the noun by using the measure word. It works a bit like "ones" in the sentence "I have five books, three blue ones and two red ones."
Measure words in English
I only count cases where the measure words are sufficiently different from the things being measured, at least being used as metonyms. Sufficiently unguessable.
- a head of cattle
- a round of applause
