A sentence in this podcast made me wonder, when can you drop the measure word?

Echo gives the example sentence “这房子看起来很破。” I would've thought that 这房子 requires a 栋 or maybe a 个.

Or, maybe, is the measure word there, but I just can't hear it?

Thanks for any help, and thanks for another entertaining, and informative, podcast.

@blaketx, @orbital,

good question.

actually in Chinese, people would omit the measure word when they speak casually. eg.

这猫很淘气。--只

我特别讨厌那人。--个

你这病怎么样了？--场

according to my personal experience, if we say:

这只猫很淘气。it means this cat not that cat i s naughty.

if we say:

这(zhè)猫很淘气。it just means the cat here is pretty naughty.那(nà)猫很淘气。is the same.

in addition, if we change the pronunciation of 这 and 那 to zhèi and nèi：

这(zhèi) functions like 这个(zhège)

那(nèi) functions like 那个(nàge)

eg. 这(zhèi)猫很淘气。means this cat not that cat is naughty.

@paglino9,

那得看can be translated as：it depends on...

eg.那得看他的意见了。it depends on his opinion.

那得看明天的天气怎么样了。it depends on the weather tomorrow.

那得看你有没有时间了。it depends on whether you have time or not.

and 看情况 can be translated as: it depends.

明天你去吗？——看情况。

你什么时候能完成？——看情况。

你什么时候回来？——看情况吧。

Excellent answer on both fronts. Thank you Gail and Echo

Why use 二 in the phrase er4 liang? If it is a measure word shouldnt 两 be used?

@user5834,

echo is right.

actually there are two reasons for us to use 二 here.

1. the pronunciation would be hard if we have two 两 together, and because 两is also a measure word, we use 二for the number.

2. for measure words of chinese traditional weight unit, we use 二 instead of 两。the tranditional measure words are 斤 and 两, however, today we can also say 两斤.

@opavlikova,

Welcome to Popup Chinese ! 欢迎你！

Glad to hear that you like our lessons ! If you have any suggestions or questions, you can always write to me or leave a comment on the site :)

--Echo

[email protected]

Welcome to Popup Chinese, Susan. This is a good site and a good community too, even if there are a few too many Canadians skulking around for anyone to ever feel completely safe. :)

Thanks for the welcome. Aside from you (and even your Canadians...) one thing I love about your podcasts is the amazing actors you've managed to get on your team. Totally first class! I'm a voice-over narrator myself, and really wince at other language learning resources that take no care in enlisting talent for this aspect of their productions. Listening to this first class acting talent on PopupChinese is like music to my ears. I've been wondering why they aren't mentioned by name, as they contribute so much to the appeal of your site. Wish you guys would break down and show us a photo of your entire crew---you could hide it somewhere on a back page, where only really interested people could find it... (Let me know if you do!)

@Susanjallen,

Thank you so much for your good words about our voice actors :) Actually you can see all of their photos and videos on the home page. On the "text" page of each lesson, you can always find the voice actors' names on the left.

--Echo

[email protected]

@minghan,

Yes, it's usually like you said!

However, in this sentence in the dialogue, 就是 means "just". When you listen to the way the actor says the line, you can hear him emphasizing the 就是. That's why it's not a 不是...就是 structure.

--Echo

[email protected]

@dominic.jackson，

Here it's short for 可是 and it's actually quite common in spoken Chinese. i.e. 可我不想去。可他不知道。