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5 ridiculously specific Chinese classifiers


TimAstier

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I guess the high-content part is in the article. Is there any way to share links to articles on this forum?

I thought this would make sense as it is directly related to vocabulary.

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I can't imagine people actually say 一峰單峰駱駝 or 一峰雙峰駱駝 instead of the much easier-to-say 一頭單峰駱駝 and 一頭雙峰駱駝. I also vaguely remember hearing once upon a time that we're "supposed to" avoid using measure words that appear in the word being measured, e.g. 一個房間 instead of 一間房間 and 一個項目 instead of 一項項目 but I don't think I've ever seen this written in any grammar anywhere?

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@OP

 

I think ... 

step 1: put your website in your signature 

step 2: start a discussion to start a discussion, not generate clicks

step 3: put a link on your website to the chinese-forums discussion 

 

:lol:

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That's true, using a measure word that also appears in a word seems like a repetition.

I never heard this formulated as a rule but it makes sense. I was trying to find a counter example but couldn't find any so far.

 

So for camels 一峰骆驼 would work (although ambiguous since we don't know exactly which type of 骆驼 it is), but another classifier should be used to talk about specifically 单峰骆驼 and 双峰骆驼, right?

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2 hours ago, TimAstier said:

So for camels 一峰骆驼 would work (although ambiguous since we don't know exactly which type of 骆驼 it is)

Much as with 羊, the Chinese don't really care in most cases. And neither do English-speakers, do they? I think they usually just say 'camel', whether it has one or two humps. I love 峰 as a measure word for camels, even if I wonder whether it is really used much.

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