Demonstratives, nouns, and classifiers

The next thing you’ll want to talk about is what you see in the environment around you.

One of the most important little words in Mandarin is 这. It’s used to refer to things nearby, much like this is in English. Its counterpart is 那, meaning that. The question form is 哪, meaning which.

这个人

This CL person

This person

那辆车

That CL car

That car

哪家餐厅

Which CL restaurant

Which restaurant

What does that CL mean? In Mandarin, demonstratives like this and that need to come with classifiers. An example from English might be easier:

We can’t say this pants in English, we have to say this pair of pants. In the same vein, we can say either this paper or this sheet of paper–showing that in this case, the classifier is optional.

We’ve just mentioned two classifiers in English, pair and sheet, and Mandarin does in fact have classifiers that are equivalent to those.

It also has classifiers for vehicles 辆, long thin things 条, small buildings 家, and people 个, among dozens more. Fortunately, the people classifier can also be used as a general classifier when you’re not sure of which one to use.

一条路

A road

四家餐厅

Four restaurants

八个人

Eight people

There’s a plural classifier too, but just one for all cases: 些. It can be translated pretty effectively as “several” or “a few.”

一些西瓜

A few watermelons

If you’re talking about two things specifically, you need to use the special “counting” version of the number two: 两

两家房子

Two houses