Japanese and Chinese lack plurals and grammatical gender but have noun classes that influence how things are counted. One counts “1 little animal of cat” or “2

Japanese and Chinese lack plurals and grammatical gender but have noun classes that influence how things are counted. One counts “1 little animal of cat” or “2 flat thing of paper”. These words can serve a kind of poetical function; but in principle you could use the generic one — “ko” in Japanese and “gè” in Mandarin Chinese — for everything, and it is even accepted that as a foreigner you will. However, doing so is taken to be a sign of infelicity with the language. One instructor related to me that failure to use an advanced counter when the opportunity presents itself is a sign of poor education, rather like missing the opportunity to use a word like “infelicity”.