A small word with a big job
In English you can say “three books” or “two cats” directly. In Mandarin Chinese, a number usually cannot sit right next to a noun. A small extra word goes in between, called a measure word (also known as a classifier). The pattern is:
number + measure word + noun
So “three books” is sān běn shū, with běn as the measure word that goes with books. “Two cats” is liǎng zhī māo, with zhī as the measure word for many small animals. The same pattern appears with “this” and “that” and with the question word for “how many”.
English has a faint echo of this idea in phrases such as “a sheet of paper”, “a head of cattle” or “a pair of shoes”. The difference is that in Chinese, measure words are required in almost every counting situation, not only for things that are hard to count.
The most common measure words
A few examples give a sense of the range. The tone marks below show Mandarin pronunciation.
| Measure word | Typical use | Example |
|---|---|---|
| 个 (gè) | the general, all-purpose word; people and many abstract things | 一个人 (one person) |
| 本 (běn) | books and bound volumes | 三本书 (three books) |
| 条 (tiáo) | long, thin or flexible things | 一条鱼 (one fish), 一条路 (one road) |
| 张 (zhāng) | flat things, such as paper or tables | 一张纸 (one sheet of paper) |
| 只 (zhī) | many small animals | 两只猫 (two cats) |
| 杯 (bēi) | cups, in the sense of a cupful | 一杯茶 (a cup of tea) |
The examples use simplified characters, which the article on simplified and traditional characters explains. Traditional forms of some of these differ, such as 個 for 个.
Kinds of measure words
Measure words fall into a few broad groups.
Classifiers by kind or shape. These attach to a noun because of what sort of thing it is. Books, long things, flat things and animals each tend to have a typical word. When a learner first meets this, it can feel arbitrary, but there is often a pattern: the word tends to pick out a visible feature such as shape.
Container and unit words. These name an amount, like English “cup”, “bottle” or “bowl”. A cup of tea, a bowl of rice and a bottle of water work similarly in both languages.
Group and collective words. These cover pairs, sets, groups and crowds, much like “a pair of” or “a flock of”.
Event and verb measures. Some words count how many times something happens, for instance a trip, a time or a meal.
Why does Chinese do this?
There is no simple answer, and linguists have proposed different explanations. A few observations are widely shared.
In Chinese, nouns are generally not marked as singular or plural. Because the noun itself does not change, the measure word helps present the noun as a countable unit. Some scholars view classifiers as a kind of grammatical device for turning a general noun into something that can be counted.
Many other languages in East and Southeast Asia, and elsewhere in the world, also use classifier systems, so this is a recognized feature of human language and not a quirk of Chinese. It is best not to read it as a statement about how Chinese speakers think about the world, since speakers of languages without classifiers manage counting perfectly well.
What measure words reveal about categories
Measure words do show how a language sorts things into groups. Looking at them can be interesting in a modest, descriptive way.
- Many words highlight shape: long things, flat things, round things.
- Some highlight kind: animals, vehicles, books, people.
- Some can change the nuance. A noun may sometimes take different measure words to emphasize different features, and speakers choose depending on what they want to stress. A single word like “tree” can be counted with a word that treats it as a long object, for instance.
- Some measure words carry respect or formality. For people, there are polite alternatives to the plain general word in formal language.
These groupings are not perfect logic. Some pairings are conventional and simply have to be learned, much as English speakers learn that it is “a pack of wolves” but “a school of fish”. Languages often keep old habits.
The all-purpose 个
The word 个 (gè) is the most flexible of all. In casual speech, it is often used where a more specific word exists, and listeners usually understand. For a learner this is a relief: if you forget the specific one, 个 is frequently acceptable in conversation, though it may sound less precise or less natural. Over time, learners are expected to pick up the specific ones that go with common nouns.
Practical tips for learners
- Learn the word with the noun. Treat “three books” as a unit, sān běn shū, rather than memorizing the measure word alone.
- Start with a handful. A few common words cover a great deal of everyday speech.
- Use a dictionary. Good dictionaries list the typical measure word for each noun.
- Expect regional and personal variety. Speakers in different places, and speaking different varieties, may prefer different words, and the standard has also shifted slightly over time.
Measure words also appear in set phrases and in classical writing in other forms, which links back to the older written language described in the article on Classical Chinese. Similar counting habits show up in the spoken varieties as well, though the actual words can differ between Mandarin and, for instance, Cantonese.
Measure words are one of the first features that make Chinese grammar feel different to an English speaker, but they follow understandable patterns and become natural with practice.