Plurals

Plurals in Chinese are done differently than in English so the translations cause problems. In English the plural is done with a suffix s added to the noun. In Chinese, the noun doesn't distinguish between one or many. It is prefixes to the noun that specify how many and which ones we are talking about.

I know in the US, the usual usage is "book drop" but I think you can drop off more than one book at a time so I like this translation at the NCKU library.
















In the image below, I'm pretty sure the owner wanted the sign to say:

Lilly's Fruit Store

but got a little confused about the s used for plurals and the s used for posessives. Even English speakers mess this up.
















But in English the situation isn't that clear how about.

1. That store has a lot of fruit.
2. That store has a lot of fruits.

1. Could mean: that store has 100 pounds of oranges and a ton of apples...
2. Could mean: that store has 10 kinds of apples, 10 types of grapes, 10 varieties of pears, ...

How about the noun fish.

1. That store has a lots of fish.
2. That store has a lot of fishes.
(This doesn't sound right but I'm sure the King James Bible has phrases like:
"All the fishes of the sea ... "
3. The store has all kinds of fish.

The last sentence is close to the Chinese way of adding prefixes to specify and use a general noun to represent both singular and plural.


The world "center" seems strange to pluralize. How many centers does an apple have? But here of course we are talking about different locations. We all have graduated from the many "Centers of Excellence". I think the usage is correct but it's a tough one. Of course, if this is just one such location then the usage is wrong.

Being in language classes gets you thinking about these kind of questions, others might not waste their time in this way. But I do.


I got a hair cut, here is the before image.

Here is the after image. I should learn how to smile more. This haircut costs 200 NT which is about $6 US. This has got to be the cheapest haircut I got since Liberia, but of course they were working with good material. Since this haircut I have seen street signs advertizing hair cuts 70NT adults, 50NT children.