Basic Grammar: all 87 lessons free
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几 — The Question Word That Stops Asking
概数“几” — 不再发问的疑问词
Say 几只猫 with a period instead of a question mark and it means a few cats — under ten, uncounted. 十几 climbs to the teens, 几十 into the tens.
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Memory hook
几个 = a few — and nobody counted
Five reports, zero questions
These are the place-有-thing sentences you have built since the existence lesson — the only new part is the fuzzy number. Tap any line; every one ends with a period.
Tap any line to hear it
Memory hook
几个 · 十几个 · 几十个 — the ladder
Ask nothing, estimate everything什么都不问，全靠估
No pressure — just making it stick.
冰箱里有几____啤酒。
Bīngxiāng lǐ yǒu jǐ ____ píjiǔ.
There are a few bottles of beer in the fridge.
How much money is on the floor, roughly?
我们班有____个人。
Wǒmen bān yǒu ____ gè rén.
There are ten-odd people in our class — between ten and twenty.
她____岁。
Tā ____ suì.
She is twenty-something.
Your turn — say it
房间里有几只老鼠。
There are a few mice in the room.
你觉得他们____岁？
Nǐ juéde tāmen ____ suì?
How old do you think they are? (Two grown men — around fifty.)
Roughly how much is the book?
Your turn — say it
那里有几个帅哥。
There are a few handsome guys over there.
This lesson's characters
Three new measure words — the rack that 几 hangs its estimates on.
bottle; measure word for bottles
形meaning + sound
瓦 on the right is a roof tile — the sign for anything fired from clay, from the days when every bottle was ceramic. 并 on the left lends the sound, bìng bent into píng. Glass and plastic arrived centuries later and kept the old clay label: a beer bottle, a wine bottle, any bottle is still 瓶, and as a measure word it counts by the bottleful — 几瓶啤酒.
lump, piece; the spoken word for yuan
形meaning + sound
土 on the left is earth; 夬 on the right lends the sound. The original meaning is a clod — a lump of soil you could pick up — and from there it counts anything lumpish or cut into pieces: 一块西瓜, a slab of watermelon. Money caught the habit in the days of silver dollars, one hard lump each; a century on, 块 is still how prices are said out loud — 几块钱 — while 元 stays on the receipts.
measure word for long, bendy things
形meaning + sound
The old form was 條, a twig. The tree 木 still stands at the bottom of the simplified shape, holding the meaning; the strokes above it are what survived of a sound part. A twig is long, thin, and bends without breaking — and that is exactly what 条 counts: 一条鱼 a fish, 一条河 a river, and the 一条裤子 you priced back in the how-many lesson. If it is long and it flexes, reach for 条.
Take these with you
Everything worth taking away. Tap any line to hear it.
Words 生词
Characters 汉字
Before you go课后回顾
- Open your fridge, glance — do not count — and report: 冰箱里有几瓶… whatever is actually in there.
- 几 alone stays under ten. After 十 it makes the teens; before 十 it makes dozens. The position is the whole grammar.
- Next time someone asks your age, you can finally be precise about being vague: 二十几。三十几。