Ducks. Books. Trees. In English we have the pleasure of just tacking on an “s” at the end of the word and we make it plural. In Chinese, it’s not that easy. One book? Sure. You can get away without a measure word. But if you want to talk about two books, you’d better know that běn is the measure word you need.
两本书
liǎng běn shū
two books
ChinesePod delivers a great introductory lesson on this, and while I’ve heard a lot of people bemoan the difficulty of learning these things, I have to say I’m looking forward to it. I know a few already, but let’s put this into perspective. As near as I can tell, there’s a little more than a dozen of these things. Should be a piece of cake compared to English!
No, seriously! Take a moment to think about trying to learn English from the point of view of someone who only knows Chinese. It’s a nightmare. One of my best lessons from learning Mandarin has been the appreciation of how hard it must be for other people to learn this language if they weren’t born into it. That’s why Ms. Jenny Zhu is so impressive to me. She not only gets the language, she gets the nuance.
Look at paper. We don’t say “one paper.” We say “a sheet of paper.” Or “a piece of paper.” If we’re talking about a lot of the stuff, we’ll say “a ream of paper,” or “a stack of paper.” And what if you tear off the corner of a piece of paper? Then what have you got? A piece of a piece of paper. That’s confusing as hell to a non-native speaker.
English is chock full of collective nouns, those words that identify things in groups. Like a gaggle of geese or an army of frogs. Two of my favorites are a murder of sharks and a parliament of rooks. I mean, if sharks traveling together should be called anything, murder is the right word for it!
Hell, I can do this all day.
A wake of buzzards.
A caravan of camels.
A piddle of puppies.
A harem of courtesans.
A threatening of courtiers.
An insanity of collective nouns!
(Okay, I made that last one up.)
So think about this the next time you’re trying to learn those measure words. Chinese seems to me, as a Newbie, to be built upon an architecture of logical thought. I’m sure I’ll find exceptions to this rule, but so far, I like the simplicity of the system.
Oh, and as for this entry’s title… team, flush and raft are all acceptable collective nouns for ducks.
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Frank, bad news there is a lot more than a dozen
Even worse news they get funky just when when you think you have learned zhi1 for animals you find it is pi3 for horses (and wolves but the dictionary doesn’t tell you that) and tiao2 for snakes (because they are long and wriggly like rivers) and tiao2 for dogs (because they are not long and wriggly …… wtf ooooh just because) .
Good news is there are compensations for example all baby animals I have encountered are just xiao3 [animal name]. I caught the expresion on my Chinese friends face when I told him we have a different word for almost every baby animal (priceless).
BTW I just did those above from memory, you might want to check them before use.
Just found this page, looks interesting.
http://www.ctcfl.ox.ac.uk/Grammar%20exercises/Measure%20words.htm
Yes, it does seem to me that learning Chinese would be easier than English as well. The one that struck me the most was how we name months. In English you have to learn 12, separate, totally unrelated words (which are based on what, Greek gods? I don’t even know)but in Chinese, all you need to know is how to count to twelve and the word for month? Ingenious!
Same goes for weeks.
I love this language.
Everyone always talks about how evil and terribly confusing that measure words are, but in reality they really aren’t that bad. Especially when you start comparing them against English. I think a lot of people get scared of measure words simply because there is a name assigned to them. In English at least as a native speaker I never really thought or classified all of those words in English as “Measure Words”.
Besides a few of the measure words in Chinese are usually enough to get you by on a daily basis.
Very informative, Frank! I had no idea about a flush of ducks. The raft makes sense. Flush conjures up images of a whirlpool of ducks well on their way to our sewer system.
Now that my Net+ burnden is passed, I should revisit joining this site again and getting my Mandarine on.
Chris - LOL You had me cracking up on the tiao2 for dogs line. Good one! And I knew it couldn’t be that easy! But, hey… check out Bazza’s great link!
Bazza - Mehtinks you are just determined to earn that “great and mighty” appellation I gave you a few posts back. This rocks, sir! Thanks for passing that along! Do you mind if I pass along that link in a separate post?
Colleen - I was thinking the same thing! And yeah, it’s largely Greek and Roman gods for the months, but the days of the week (some of them anyway) are based on the Norse gods! How did that happen?! (Wednesday = Woden’s Day (Woden = Odin), Thursday = Thor’s Day.)
Chris - Yeah! That’s what I’m talking about! And look how lucky we are to have ChinesePod to make it such a pleasant learning experience.
Anne - You TOTALLY have to come back! Just think about all the Chinese teamspeak we’ll be able to do together on COH! Hehehe.
Sure go ahead.
Wow, I have to say that Englihs measure words are really… scaring, for me.
haha, this is really a very interesting topic …..and a difficult and exhausting one!:)
Here is a link for English animal ‘measure’ words…
http://www.npwrc.usgs.gov/about/faqs/animals/names.htm
By the way, a group of sharks is a school or shiver.
Here is the link I use for Chinese measure words…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_measure_word
–Lin
Bazza - Thanks! I appreciate it!
正在看牡丹 - Don’t be too put off. I’m using the most uncommon examples. Most native speakers don’t know these things, either. You could say “a bunch of ducks” to anyone on the street and they’d know what you meant.
Elizabeth - I’m glad you liked it!
Yeah, collective nouns are usually only required in general knowledge quizzes.
There’s a list of measure words here:
http://digchinese.com/en/measure-words