Reseach On Chinese And Vietnamese Measure Words

For a long time, the study of the differences and similarities between Chinese andVietnamese measure words has never been disrupted. There are lots of similarities betweenthe two, and so are the differences. Often, Vietnamese learners find it is greatly complicatedto understand Chinese measure words due to being heavily influenced by their mother tonguebesides the high level of difficulty of Chinese measure words.The purpose of this research is to confront those misunderstandings by Vietnameselearners towards Chinese measure words, analyse and compare the grammatical rules,sentence structures of Chinese and Vietnamese languages, compare the usage of ‘ge’ and‘zhi’ in Chinese with the usage of ‘cai’‘chiec’‘con’ in Vietnamese. Subsequently, provideimportant principles and practical recommendation for Vietnamese learners when tacklingChinese measure words.Both Chinese and Vietnamese measure words are able to join with numbers, nouns,pronouns and small numbers of adjectives. Chinese measure words appear to be influenced bythe structure and the function of the numbers and the nouns that they go with; therefore, theirpositions in sentences are different. Vietnamese measure words, in contrary, are notinfluenced by any factors and always go before a noun. So the "multi" to " single "relationships is formed in sentence structure of indicates quality in two languages. In Chineselanguage, measure words are used to indicate the quantity. In Vietnamese language, generallymeasure words are not used with Sino Vietnamese words or words that describe body parts ora profession. Typically, Sino Vietnamese measure words go alone and cannot overlap.Chinese measure words do not have this character; they can go one after one creating a uniquelinguistic phenomenon.From the linguistic meaning, in Chinese language, the5measure words used whenaddress to a person can show the attitude of the speaker to the listener, whether with respector without respect. While, in Vietnamese, there are25measure words that can indicate ages,gender, and social relationship. In Chinese language, measure words that indicate animals,objects vary and differ accordingly. In Vietnamese language, there is only one measure wordto indicate animals and two measure words to indicate objects which are ‘con’ and ‘chiec’respectively. In Chinese language, the positions of measure words are after adjectives. InVietnamese, adjectives go between measure words and nouns when the nouns are uncountable.When the nouns are countable, adjectives will go after measure words, but the meaning willbe different.From the grammatical role, under some conditions, Vietnamese measure words cannotfunction as attributors, subjects and objects. In Chinese, measure word cannot act as attributorunless the number ‘1’ which goes with that measure word is omitted.In terms of grammatical function, linguistically meaning, and usage, there are also differencesbetween ‘ge’ and ‘cai’‘chiec’ or between ‘zhi’ and ‘con’. Those differences are clearly demonstrated through variety of masterpieces which were translated from Chinese intoVietnamese and via versa.Close measure words are the focus in learning Chinese measure words; they are also themost challenging for Vietnamese learners. Therefore, it is crucial for the teachers to focus onhow to recognise the differences; also employed various teaching methods when teachingChinese measure words.Finally, I hope that this research can offer some assistance for those who have difficultyin learning Chinese measure words. I also hope that the research can be used as a referencesource in Chinese teaching and translating.