For the past weeks, I have been focusing on learning Vietnamese grammar, especially classifiers. I found that similar other languages like English, Japanese, and Chinese most of the classifiers indicate the shape of objects e.g. "strand" as a classifier usually indicates an object that is thin and flexible such as hair or fur. According to Giang Pham and Kathryn Kohnert from the University of Minnesota, “Vietnamese has been reported to have as few as three words that arguably could be considered ['classifiers' to as many as 200].” For the sakes of learning one thing at a time, I have decided to focus on “unit classifiers” which are words or affixes that accompanies a noun to indicate the unit of said noun.
A few words I have picked up in the past week that can be considered “unit classifiers” are:
- cái used for inanimate objects
- chiếc used similar to cái
- con used for animals and children
- người used for people
- bài used for compositions
- câu used for sentential constructs
- cây used for stick-like objects
- chuyện used for a general topic
- lá used for smaller sheets of paper
- tòa used for buildings
- quả/trái used for round objects
- quyển/cuốn used for books
- tờ / trang used for objects made of paper
- việc used for an event or a process
I have used most these words before in countless conversations but there are some that I know but do not ever use such as: lá, tòa, quả, quyển, tờ, and việc. An explanation for this is likely regional dialect and education. I was taught to use the southern dialect, so I suspect certain classifiers are simply more common in the southern dialect and therefore more comfortable for me to use. For things like books, I have always used cuốn rather than quyển, and for papers, I have always used trang rather than tờ, et cetera. The Vietnamese classifier system is said to closely resemble the Chinese, Korean, and Japanese classifier system in that the noun can often be omitted if the subject had previously been established.
Additionally, something that I found extremely interesting is cái – often used as a universal classifier similar to the Japaneseつand the Chinese 个 – is almost never translated when used because there is not really an English equivalent. I think that cái can be roughly translated to “it” which is not a classifier, but the word is general enough to carry the same weight as cái in terms of a definition. For example:
Con cần mua bút I (child) need to buy pens
Máy cái how many (of it)
2 cái 2 (of it)
But of course, this excessive usage of “it” or “of it” would make any conversations or sentences sound unnatural and since there is no other English equivalent (unless one wants to continuously uses the noun) cái is usually dropped when translated.
Another thing that I’ve learned in the past week is that there is a difference between “classifiers” and “measure nouns”. On the surface, they are very similar but they have different characteristics.
Classifiers: · Cannot combine with another classifier · Function words / grammatical morphemes · Unstressed · Can be used only with specific nouns | Measure nouns: · Can combine with each other · Lexical items · Stressed · Can be used with a variety of nouns |
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