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Chinese depends on a similar language feature. You might have "two 隻 dogs" but "three 本 books" because books and dogs have different measure words. I believe th
by sowbug 3y ago
Chinese depends on a similar language feature. You might have "two 隻 dogs" but "three 本 books" because books and dogs have different measure words. I believe this is more important in Chinese than English because Chinese overloads relatively few sounds to represent its vocabulary, so the extra word paired with a noun helps disambiguate it from its many homophones.
- _lvbh 3y agoAs an example: 两只狗 - liang zhi gou - two dogs 两条沟 - liang tiao gou - two ditches The weird thing is, I’ve definitely heard people use “条” for dogs and fish as well. It gets confusing with all the special cases