Measure words are also called classifiers.
See also Numbers.
go |
個 | (the most common of all measure words) for people; for medium-sized, round objects like fruit, bowls, plates and buns; for countries and regions; for abstract nouns like questions, ideas and decisions; for many things that are not easily categorized like drawers and screw drivers |
bou |
部 | for books and magazines |
bui |
杯 | glass, cup |
bun |
本 | for books and magazines |
| döü |
對 | pair, couple |
| dzek |
隻 | for mammals, birds and insects; for utensils; for some parts of the body like hands and legs; for boats |
| dzi |
支 | for slender, long and stiff objects such as pens, pencils, flowers, sticks; for songs, music; for armies, navies |
| dzön |
樽 | bottle |
| dzœng |
張 | for flat things like papers, documents, dollar bills, swords, knives, CDs and records; for furniture like tables and chairs |
| fai |
塊 | slice, piece, lump |
| ga |
架 | for cars, vehicles, planes; for devices like computers, TVs and stereos |
l p |
粒 | for very small things like grains of cereal, sand, cloves of garlic, diamonds, beads, stars |
| po |
for plants, trees and vegetables | |
| su |
首 | for songs |
tiu |
條 | for long objects like ribbons, tapes, strings, ties, loaves of bread; for hair, feathers, bones; for keys, roads, fish and reptiles; rude or slang for people |
| tsöt |
齣 | for movies and plays |
| wi |
for people in polite speech |
In English, there are some words we must count in units:
Note that it is impossible or ungrammatical to say something like "two news" or "four breads".
In Cantonese, nearly all words work this way. We must use a special counting unit before them. For example:
| three people | sam go y n |
|
| four dogs | sei dzek gu |
|
| two loaves of bread | lœng tiu min bau |
Whenever you learn new vocabulary, it is a good idea to also learn the associated measure word (MW) with it. For example:
| person | 人 | yn (MW: 個 go) |
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