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Those crazy measure words!
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thph2006 -

Well, when I first started learning Mandarin I just couldn't comprehend why they invented so many
of those crazy measure words. Now I'm beginning to realize English is just as crazy! Check this
out:

From: http://science.howstuffworks.com/22-...of-animals.htm
Have you ever heard the expression, "a gaggle of geese?" These names for groups of animals are
pretty peculiar, too.
1. A shrewdness of apes
2. A battery of barracudas
3. A kaleidoscope of butterflies
4. A quiver of cobras
5. A murder of crows
6. A convocation of eagles
7. A charm of finches
8. A skulk of foxes
9. A troubling of goldfish
10. A smack of jellyfish
11. A mob of kangaroos
12. An exaltation of larks
13. A troop of monkeys
14. A parliament of owls
15. An ostentation of peacocks
16. A rookery of penguins
17. A prickle of porcupines
18. An unkindness of ravens
19. A shiver of sharks
20. A pod of whales
21. A descent of woodpeckers
22. A zeal of zebras

P.S. As a native English speaker I'm embarrassed to say I only knew 4 of the 22. Measure words, ya
just gotta love em!



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muyongshi -

4! Wow I'm impressed...I only got a pod of whales....










LiYuanXi -

A murder of crows. That's funny~ One might think that the crows got murdered instead.

I have only got 1 too, a kaleidoscope of butterflies.










roddy -

Moved to 'other cultures and languages', as it's not really about Chinese.

Anyway, there's no reason to know these - plenty of them are made up.










BrandeX -

yea, besides being made up for most of them, these are names given to groups of animals, an as
such are not english "measure words". That would be words like " x sheets of paper" or "x bottles
of beer", but even then they do not really fit the same idea presented linguistically of "measure
words" in Chinese or other languages.










johnmck -

I never realised there were so many group nouns for animals, so I had a quick check on the
internet and found this list just for birds:

A dissimulation of birds
A dole of doves
An exaltation of larks
A fall of woodcocks
A flight of swallows [or doves, goshawks, or cormorants]
A gaggle of geese [wild or domesticated]
A host of sparrows
A kettle of hawks [riding a thermal]
A murmuration of starlings
A murder of crows
A muster of storks
A nye of pheasants [on the ground]
An ostentation of peacocks
A paddling of ducks [on the water]
A parliament of owls
A party of jays
A peep of chickens
A pitying of turtledoves
A raft of ducks
A rafter of turkeys
A siege of herons
A skein of geese [in flight]
A sord of mallards
A spring of teal
A tidings of magpies
A trip of dotterel
An unkindness of ravens
A watch of nightingales
A wedge of swans [or geese, flying in a "V"]
A wisp of snipe


For birds, I knew a flock of birds and a gaggle of geese, I had no idea of the others. Clearly one
can get by in English by using the generic "flock" for birds. Does this mean I can get by in
Chinese with just "ge"?










mr.stinky -

we've had this discussion amongst fellow students many times. we usually get these
examples of english measure words: deck of cards and suit of clothes. thing is, they're
not really measure words in the chinese sense, but rather in the english sense of taking
a measure of something.

the english measure words are all nouns themselves, standing for a measure or collection
of something else. and in the case of suit of clothes or deck of cards, the measure is
not just a collection of random items that happen to be the same or similar, they go
together for a purpose. a suit, a deck, a flight (of stairs), is more than just a bunch of
the other thing. and the collected noun thingies all follow "of," so i guess that makes them
prepositional modifiers...(or something, grammar wizards please advise.)

the chinese measure words mostly don't serve that function. i like to think of them as
classifiers or categorizers (trying to think of a better word here). the only real function
they serve, as i sees it, is to clarify (hey, how about clarifiers?) which freakin' noun you're
actually talking about, since so many of the words are the same/similar.

but then, i could be wrong.










muyongshi -



Quote:

not really measure words in the chinese sense, but rather in the english sense of taking a measure
of something.

But this is not always the case such as in a pair of pants or a pair of sock.

Also they may not be the same thing but they still present the same problem in terms of
learning...you have to know what goes with what otherwise in daily life you sound weird and there
is many times less logic than in the english whereas there is some good consistency in the Chinese
allowing you to guess many times.










flameproof -

A fuselage of stewardesses










Josh2007 -

A lot more can be found at http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexper...ctive/?view=uk, which uses the
whole 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary to find them. But note: it also says "Many will be
familiar but others will be unheard of, deriving from 15th century witticisms or literary
imagination, and some are simply archaic or erroneous. " Some of them have never really been used.
What collective term could there be for Chinese language learners? A frustration?












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