Today’s selection from the rules on how to write Pinyin deals with measure words (800 KB PDF).
Measure words are a pet peeve of many beginning Mandarin students. (“But teacher, why can’t we just use ge for everything?”) Many more advanced students, however, get a sort of perverse pleasure out of memorizing them. If you fall into the latter group, be sure to go through the PDF linked to above, as it supplies more than 100 measure words, along with sample usages.
Fortunately, although measure words themselves can be a real pain for non-native speakers to memorize, the rules for writing them are simple: in almost all cases they’re separate.
- yī bēi chá (a cup of tea)
- yī běn shū (a book)
- yÄ« jiÄn fángzi (a house)
- yī kuà i qián (one yuan / one NT dollar)
- yÄ« lià ng zìxÃngchÄ“ (a bicycle)
- yÄ« pià n mià nbÄo (a slice of bread)
- yÄ« pÃng jiÇ” (a bottle of wine)
- yÄ« tóu shuÇniú (a water buffalo)
- yÄ« zhÄng zhÇ (a sheet of paper)
- yÄ« zhÄ« gÄnbÇ (a fountain pen)
I have some friends who are good at Pinyin who say that yi ge (but not liang ge, san ge, etc.) is an exception, that it should be written solid: yige. But I have yet to see this stated in the rules; and from what I’ve seen Yin Binyong writes them separate just like everything else. Of course, it’s possible I’ve overlooked something.
Slightly trickier are indefinite measure words.
There are only two indefinite measure words in Putonghua: xiē 些 (some; a few) and diǎnr 点儿 [or just plain ol' diǎn 点] (a little, a bit).
xiē 些 indicates a fairly large number or amount. It can follow the numeral yī 一 (one), a demonstrative pronoun zhè 這 (this) or nà 那 (that), or certain other modifiers. It is written as one unit with the component it follows:
- yīxiē 一些 (some);
- zhèxiē 這些 (these);
- nà xiē 那些 (those);
- hǎoxiē 好些 (a lot of).
diǎnr 点儿 indicates a small number or amount. It can follow the numeral yī 一 (one), a demonstrative pronoun zhè 這 (this) or nà 那 (that), or certain other modifiers. It is written as one unit with the component it follows:
- yīdiǎnr 一點兒 (a bit, a little);
- zhèdiǎnr 這點兒 (this bit, these few);
- nà diǎnr 那點兒 (that bit, those few).
When xiē or diǎnr are preceded by a verb, however, they are written separately from it:
- chÄ« xiÄ“ dÅngxi åƒäº›æ±è¥¿ (eat something);
- xiÄ› xiÄ“ wénzhÄng å¯«äº›æ–‡ç« (do some writing);
- chÄ« diÇŽnr dÅngxi åƒé»žå…’æ±è¥¿ (eat a little something);
- xiÄ› diÇŽnr wénzhÄng å¯«é»žå…’æ–‡ç« (do a little writing).
