名词分类

What goes with a number to count a thing?

English puts a number straight in front of most nouns — three books, three dogs — and only reaches for an extra word when the noun resists counting: three sheets of paper, two head of cattle. Across East and Southeast Asia that extra word is required for ordinary countable things, and which one you pick depends on what the thing is. Japanese counts books with 冊, sheets with 枚 and pencils with 本. Bantu languages do a comparable job from the other end, making the numeral agree with the class the noun already belongs to. Most of these counting words are nouns caught partway through a change: Indonesian ekor is a tail, Vietnamese cây a tree, Thai khon a person.