Lucky Dragon     
 Chinese        

In Chinese, as in English, measure words are used to describe or specify a noun, such as: two quarts of milk, a bushel of potatoes, a flock of birds, a herd of cattle, or, three cups of tea. In English, some nouns are used with accompanying measures:

and others have no measures attached to them:

In Chinese, however, measure words always accompany a noun, when a quantity of that noun is being spec ified:

Notice that the word liang is used instead of er, the usual translation of two.

Liang is the usual measure word, used as a quantifier for describing when two of a thing are present.

The word er, on the other hand, is a cardinal and used in all other cases when one means "two".

Liang is used for numbering two things, and telling clock-time (two o'clock), for two pennies and two dollars. Er is used for counting, two dimes, Tuesday (the second day of the week), February (the second month of the year) and in compound (twelve, twenty or more things) measures..

For a pair, say

Only when a noun is being used without a sense of quantity, is the measure word omitted:

big books
smart students
green apples

The word ge is a general measure. It can be applied to most nouns, and is often so generally used, colloquially, by a great many Chinese, but proper usage, and the mark of an educated person, should be to know and use the appropriate measure word for each noun:

For people, ge is acceptable, but wei is the proper term:

一個男人
兩個女人
三個女孩
兩個男孩

一位總統
兩位老師
三位教授

In some instances the use of ge is illiterate and marks the person as uneducated. Try to learn the formal measure word. Don't say

yīge shū
sānge zhǐ
yīge běnzi
sānge zìdǐan

say instead

Additional adjectives are placed after the quantity and measure words, but before the noun:

unless they are demonstrative adjectives:

Most measure words quantify a certain class of objects. The nouns that a particular measure word quantifies generally fall into a certain category, e.g., long, narrow things:

or things with a handle:

To ask a question, use the indefinite measure ji:

Measures were probably developed long ago in the Chinese language as an aid to intelligibility, just as tones were. Tones help to distinguish between two characters with a similar pronunciation; in a like manner, accompanying and dissimilar measure words are also helpful in differentiating between like-sounding nouns.

(See the section on Demonstrative Pronouns for more on Measures.)