A crash course in Chinese.
Measure words. Chinese is all about measure words. If you know the measure words, I think you can basically speak Chinese. Let me explain to you what measure words are:
One pen, two pens, three pens.
One cup of water, two cups of water, three cups of water.
"Cup of" is a measure word. There is no measure word for pen in English - there is one in Chinese. "Zhi" 枝 is a measure word for "stick-like things". So saying two pens in Chinese is er zhi bi or 二枝筆. "Two stick-like pieces of pen" would probably be the most accurate translation. There are measure words for virtually anything. Wei 位 is a polite measure word for people, ge 個 is the generic measure word you can use for anything you dont know if you're a stupid foreigner. Ben 本 is the measure word for books and things like that (also for volume). Fen 份 is the measure word for newspapers. Kuai 塊 is the measure word for dollar. Bei 杯 is the measure word for "cup of...".
Now if you want to say "This pen" you will literally have to say "This one stick-like piece of pen." Zhe yi zhi bi. The one (yi) can be omitted when talking about just one, but when you talk about more than that you have to use the number too of course. These three pens would be Zhe san zhi bi or 這三枝筆. These three stick-like pieces of pen. I am still not sure WHY this is so... but it does provide a something handful way of only having to say the object once. That is, once you have mentioned the object, you can use only the measure word to refer to it. It might not seem useful when only using simple, one-character words, but when you are using 4 characters for one word or concept, I do believe it would become useful.. but I have no REAL idea, I'm just guessing here.
再見
