In Chinese language, generally speaking, the numerals and nouns are not put together directly, but need measure words between them. This is a feature of Chinese language and also a difficult point for the learners who study in Mandarin program in China. It also exists in Chinese reading. For example, when you read 有一个人买了一头驴, you may be confused what the person buys is 驴or头驴. In this case, you should know 头is measure words to modify 驴.

The teachers need to tell the students that if they meet a new word they do not understand but know it is a measure word, it doesn’t influence their understanding to the sentences or articles. More importantly, sometimes, they can make full use of measure words to judge the meaning of the word after it and even the whole sentence. Let’s take the above sentence as an example, if students never learned 驴, they can guess it is a kind of animal though the measure words 头.

Measure word is the word of indicating the unit of account and can be divided into two classifications, the nominal measure word and the verbal measure word. The foreign students who study Mandarin online should know the former indicates persons and things with the form of “numeral + measure word + noun”. For examples, 两只老鼠, 一匹马and三顿饭.

The verbal measure word is also placed after the numeral, but the numeral is after the verb with the form of “verb + numeral + measure words” such as 次and趟in我去过北京两次and为了这件事, 他跑了两遍. However, some measure words were not the measure words originally but are loaned to be measure words like 挑 and捆in 一挑水and一捆柴.

In addition, some nouns are often used together with 一to indicate the meaning of 满such as 一桌子菜and一头汗. One point that the foreign students who study in Mandarin Chinese course in China need to know is that some words can be both measure words and noun and the numeral 一will be omitted, especially after 这and那. 笔in 那笔画得不错 is measure words while noun in 那笔买得不错.