#chinese classifiers

个 (gè) mw for people and objects in general (HSK1)

本 (běn) mw for books, periodicals, files etc (HSK1)

家 (jiā) mw for families, businesses (HSK1)

张 (zhāng) mw for flat objects (eg a table), sheets (like sheets of paper, photographs etc), votes (HSK3)

次 (cì) mw for enumerated events: time (HSK2)

只 (zhī) mw for birds and certain animals; one of a pair; some utensils, vessels etc (HSK3)

位 (wèi) mw for people (honorific) (HSK3)

条 (tiáo) mw for long thin things: ribbons, rivers, roads, trousers etc (HSK3)

件 (jiàn) mw for things, clothes, events etc (HSK2)

把 (bă) mw for small objects: handful (HSK3)

口 (kǒu) mw for things with mouths (people, domestic animals, cannons, wells etc); bites or mouthfuls (HSK3)

种 (zhǒng) mw for types, kinds, sorts (HSK3)

Classifiers are an important part of Chinese grammar – virtually every noun is associated with (at least) one and, if you want to specify the number of a noun or point to ‘this’ and ‘that’ one etc., you need to know its classifier, for example, sì běn shū ‘four [classifier] book’ or zhè tiáo yú ‘this [classifier] fish’. The noun phrase would be ungrammatical without the classifier. (Note, I am using 'Chinese' to mean 'Mandarin Chinese' - other Chinese dialects/languages also have classifiers, it's just that I'm not so familiar with these as I am with Mandarin!).

There are some generalisations (note they are not hard and fast rules) about which classifier to use, for example, zhī is used for many animals and wèi is used (politely) for people etc. Whilst this may seem to be a complicated aspect of Chinese grammar, such aspects are found closer to home as well.

In English, if we want to talk about groups of animals for example there are often specific (collocational) terms which go with some animals but not others. For example, consider the words we would use to describe a group of…

Lions (pride)

Wolves (pack)

Sheep (flock)

Birds (flock)

Whales (Pod, school)

People (group, crowd)

Fish (school)

Cattle (herd)