A Contrastive Study Of Chinese And Japanese Quantifiers And The Teaching Methods Of Chinese Quantifiers For Japanese Students

The quantifiers in Chinese are not only plentiful, but also endowed with flexible usage. And since there are no singular or plural marks in Chinese words, quantifier has become a very important grammatical mark. So the quantifier is an important feature to distinguish Chinese from Indo-European. Chinese quantifiers’naming process is intricate and relatively late, and they were generally divided into quantifiers and momentum words, but in different forms depending on the standard classification; according to the source Japanese quantifiers (Japanese call "help numeral") are divided into Chinese quantifier, Japan inherent quantifiers, language quantifiers and foreign language quantifiers. The "Chinese system quantifier" account for a large proportion of the Japanese quantifiers, these words are closely linked with the Chinese and have too much thing in common, but as the cognitive way of people in two countries changes, social and economic develops in all aspects, it has produced a distinction between Chinese and Japanese quantifiers. Quantifiers in Chinese and Japanese have both similarities and differences, for Japanese-speaking learners, it has both advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is important to teach with comparing.Teaching practice shows that teaching a foreign-language quantifiers is often arranged in the primary or middle stage of learning Chinese, in view of this, this article focus on the Grade A quantifiers in "Chinese Proficiency Vocabulary and Grade Outline" to compare Chinese and Japanese quantifiers. There are 63 quantifiers in "Outline" Grade A words, which is about 6.2%. I will start a detailed comparison, as quantifiers are basically same, partly same or completely different in usage.By specifically comparative analysis through language database of College of Chinese language and culture of Jinan University, I found that the difference between Chinese and Japanese quantifiers made on the basis of their common teaching ideas:emphasize student’ contrasting awareness; learning with intuitive understanding; memory though appropriate summary and comparison; grasp gradually. Although the method is simple and need to be improved in more teaching practices, it is feasibility and helpful to teach partial quantifiers to Japanese.