Learn Chinese

A ‘Piece’ of Apple? Are You Sure?

It is ‘a piece of apple’, not ‘an apple’.

Of course, I’m talking about speaking the Chinese language.

Unlike English, you often add a classifier, or measure word, when you are describing quantity. It is, therefore,more proper to say ‘a piece of apple’, i.e. yi ge pingguo 一个苹果; rather than ‘an apple’ 一苹果– without the ‘ge’ 个as a classifier.

This can be confusing for people who are new to the language.

Add to the confusion is that the classifiers vary from object to object. In other words, there are different classifiers for different things. For example, the classifiers for a cow and a dog are different. You would say that there is ‘a head of cow’ 一头牛 but not ‘a head of dog’ 一头狗. The classifier for dog is ‘zhi’ 只, a rather common measure word, which vaguely means a unit of something.

Fortunately, if you are unsure about which classifier to use, there is one way out — always use the measure word ‘ge’ 个. The word is quite a universal classifier. It may sound odd to those who are fluent in Chinese, but they would not say that you are wrong.

This is among a few other things that you should know before you begin learning the language.

Just like learning any other languages, ultimately you will have to listen, speak and write as much as you can, in order to become fluent in the language. Knowing the peculiarity of language before hand, however, can help you plan your learning strategy better. At least, you will not be caught surprised when faced with awkward things like this.

You may want to read more about the peculiarity of the Chinese language by going to this web page of mine: http://www.chineseonthego.com/i_learn_chinese_easy.html .

You may also want to consider taking up one of the good programs for learning Chinese online, which teach you step-by-step in handling such language peculiarity. I’ve short-listed two of them for you in this review.

Other learning resources:

Fluenz Version F2: Mandarin 1+2 (Win/Mac) with software DVDs, audio CDs, podcasts, and Navigator. Learn Chinese with the latest upgrade.
Learn Chinese the Fast and Fun Way (Barron’s Fast and Fun Way Language Series)
Speak! Chinese