Ready to learn some Nuosu?
Lesson number 2.
Nuosu, like other East Asian language uses measure words.
If you are not East Asian, well, actually English and other languages use it too, only less frequently.
Think of a word "water" you cannot make it plural, it's uncountable.
but you may say
two buckets of water.
two glasses of wine.
bucket and glass are here measure words, but in Nuosu they are used much more frequently.
East Asian languages (maybe not Vietnamese) generally don't use plural and singular distinction as often as Europeans and Afro-Asiats (Arabic, Hebrew etc).
so.
ma means dog in Zhuang, it has no plural, it's just ma, you don't know how many dogs, it can be one dog, or it can be even 3043 dogs.
If you want to specify you just use the number with the measure word.
Unfortunately you will have to remember some measure words.
In Nuosu, saying things lyk "this book", things are a little tricky, it's the other way than Chinese way and Vietnamese way.
Chinese say This volume book, Vietnamese say Volume book this (quon sach nay), and Nuosu people use
Book this volume
let's try it!
ꊿꋋꂷ
co cyx ma.
This person.
ꊿ - person
ꋋ - this
ꂷ - classifier
it seems that ma is general classifier,you may use like Mandarin ge.
If you are Yi speaker, you are welcome to correct me, as i am not even a beginner, I am just showing what I have learned, and it's a language that is unlike the other things i know,so I am apt to make some mistakes.