List of Measure Words

Chinese measure words indicate the unit of measurement of some object just as their English counterparts in phrases like "three cups of water" or "a pinch of salt". However, unlike English, where many objects can be used without specifying the unit, (e.g. "three persons" or "four pencils"), Chinese objects always require a measure word when one or more instances are involved. If the object is contained inside some container, such as a cup, a bottle, or a box, the measure word is simple: it is just the name of the container. Some commonly used measure words indicate certain shapes. For example, zhi (枝) usually is used for long, stiff objects while zhang (張) is used for flat objects. There is also a generic measure word, ge (個). This doesn't mean that it can be used for any object, just that it the the most frequently used measure word when a more specific one does not apply. In some cases, some objects can use more than one measure word. For example, one can say yi ge laoshi (一個老師) or yi wei laoshi (一位老師). Learning the correct measure word is as important as learning the correct gender for nouns in languages such as Spanish or French where nouns have gender.. Ultimately, the only way to know the correct measure word is to learn them together with the name of the object.