Night of the Living Measure Word - My first Grammar Nightmare!

 I think I can safely say I have never had a grammar nightmare before. The closest I have had is one of those dreams where you are late for a test and no matter how fast you run, you can’t get to class on time to take the test you aren’t ready to take. I have been taking classes to learn Mandarin. I never knew if I was one of those people gifted with the ability to learn another language. I can speak conversational Spanish but I grew up listening to it so that doesn’t count. Mandarin was my first totally foreign language experience. I find that I am not one of those gifted people! This is difficult! You have to contend with the dreaded four tones of Mandarin.  You might say, only four tones? Cantonese has nine different tones. Well for me it just seems like more than a coincidence that there happen to be four horsemen of the apocalypse. 

Ok so if you haven’t had the pleasure, Chinese words can be said in four different ways. Each pronunciation will have a different meaning.  For instance, the word Ma can be Mother (first tone) Toad (second tone) Horse (third tone) or Scold (fourth tone). In reality that is a very simplistic approach because just when you think you are getting this down they throw in that there is a fifth tone which is no tone. Then they surprise you with the fact that each Ma can have several different Characters which make it a totally new word that sounds like the one you thought you knew but isn’t. Not only does this cause a lot of confusion but sometimes you have to just know in context what is being said since you can’t see the characters and I couldn’t read them if I did see them. So third tone Ma can be Horse, the name of a river, Mammoth, Morphinem Agate, Leprosy, Ant………you get the picture.

That would be enough to give me nightmares but it hasn’t. The grammatical point that finally got me is the dreaded MEASURE WORD!!!  When you talk about things in numerical context, you have to use the proper measure word. If you for example want one serving of rice you don’t say Yi Mifan (one Rice) you say Yi wan mifan (One bowl of rice). Ok not that bad.  Wan is the measure word for things that come in bowls mostly. Noodles, rice and such.  If you want one serving of Bao zi (steamed buns) you ask for Yi Tier Bao zi. But if you want one serving of Jiao zi (dumplings), you ask for yi pan jiao zi. If you want something that comes in a pair, the measure word is shuang. So yi shuang Kuai zi is one pair of chopsticks. If you drop one chopstick, you can’t use that measure word though because you only need one so you have to change the word to gen.

If you want a spoon, fork or knife, the M-word is Ba. This holds true for things you hold, most of the time. Other words that use ba as a M-word are doorknob, fan if it is a hand held fan only, armchair because you can put your hands on it but it also counts for a standard chair. So you would think that would hold true for gloves but the M-word for gloves is shuang because it is a pair. A watch uses the generic measure word ge.

For clothes, most of the things you wear on the top half of your body use Jian as the M-word. Hat though has Ding because that is the m-word for things on top. Pants, Skirts and things you wear below the waist use tiao, which is also used for ties, scarfs and other long thin things. If you want one suit, you have to use Tao as the m-word that also goes for pajamas. Zhang is the M-word for flat things like bed, desk and table but bed table uses ge. Also even though books are flat they use ben as the M-word TVs, computers and ovens use Tai, as does an electric fan……….. You see where I am going here??

So in my dream, I am being asked to say the measure word for a variety of things. At first I am doing OK then I get confused, Wait, isn’t that the m-word for things that are shaped like a banana? Wait a tie is flat but it is also long and straight but you wear it on the top half of your body??? Soon I am in full confusion and my teacher is throwing words at me at breakneck pace. Soon m-words are coming at me but they are spiders! Thousands of spiders crawling all over me! I am itching and scratching and trying to get them off me when I sit up straight in my bed. I am scratching my hands and arms. I realize that it is a dream but wonder if I really was bitten by spiders in the night because I am really scratching. I get up and in the light of the lamp, which I am sure has its M-word, I notice that there are no spider bites. I wonder what the measure word is for sleeping pills?