--- title: Olympiad: measure words and characters as pictures ★★★ — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Olympiad: measure words and characters as pictures ★★★», a lesson of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: ge is the everyday all-rounder, but long bendy things take tiáo, flat things take zhāng, books take běn and --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Chinese street](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/) / Olympiad: measure words and characters… # Olympiad: measure words and characters as pictures ★★★ Lesson 32 of the chinese street course of Mova's primary school: 15 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/). - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/1/) — ge is the everyday all-rounder, but long bendy things take tiáo, flat things take zhāng, books take běn and many animals take zhī, so the measure word paints a little picture of the shape. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/2/) — Some characters began as drawings: 人 is a person walking, 山 is a mountain with three peaks, 木 is a tree with its branches and roots, and 日 was once a round sun. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/3/) — Put picture-characters together and you get new ideas: two trees 林 make a wood, a sun and a moon 明 make «bright», and a person leaning on a tree 休 is having a rest, the xiū in xiūxi. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/4/) — But careful, detectives: most characters are not pictures at all, they join a part for the meaning with a part that hints at the sound, so a picture guess is a good start, not a sure answer. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/5/) — A measure word goes between the number and the noun: sān běn shū is three books and liǎng zhāng zhǐ is two sheets of paper. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/6/) — ge is the most common measure word, used for people and many things, as in yí ge rén and liǎng ge píngguǒ (two apples); in fast talk people use ge a lot. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/7/) — tiáo is for long, thin, bendy things: yì tiáo yú (a fish), yì tiáo lù (a road), yì tiáo hé (a river), yì tiáo kùzi (a pair of trousers), and also snakes (shé) and dragons. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/8/) — zhāng is for flat things with a big surface: yì zhāng zhǐ (paper), yì zhāng zhàopiàn (a photo), yì zhāng zhuōzi (a table), yì zhāng chuáng (a bed). - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/9/) — běn is for books and things bound like books: yì běn shū (a book), yì běn zìdiǎn (a dictionary). - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/10/) — zhī is for many animals, such as yì zhī māo (a cat), yì zhī niǎo (a bird) and yì zhī tùzi (a rabbit); a dog can take zhī or tiáo. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/11/) — bēi means a cup or glass of something: yì bēi shuǐ (a glass of water), liǎng bēi nǎichá (two milk teas). - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/12/) — kǒu (mouth) counts the people in a family: nǐ jiā yǒu jǐ kǒu rén? asks how many people are in your family, and wǒ jiā yǒu sì kǒu rén means there are four. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/14/) — Characters built from pictures: 林 lín (two trees) is a wood, 森 sēn (three trees) is in sēnlín, a forest, 明 míng (sun and moon) means bright, and 休 xiū (person and tree) means rest. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/15/) — 一 yī, 二 èr and 三 sān are one, two and three lines, and 十 shí (ten) is a cross, like crossed fingers for ten. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/32-olympiad-measure-words-and-picture-characters/17/) — Only a small share of characters are pictures; most join a meaning part and a sound part. - ← previous: [Olympiad: tone detectives and number puzzles ★★★](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/31-olympiad-tone-and-number-puzzles/) - ↑ back to [Chinese street](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/chinese-street/)