The modern
Chinese varieties make frequent use of what are called
classifiers or
measure words. One of the basic uses of classifiers is in
phrases in which a
noun is qualified by a
numeral. When a phrase such as "one person" or "three books" is translated into Chinese, it is normally necessary to insert an appropriate classifier between the numeral and the noun. For example, in
Standard Mandarin, the first of these phrases would be
yī rén, where
yī means "one",
rén means "person", and
ge is the required classifier. There are also other grammatical contexts in which classifiers are used, including after the
demonstratives 这 (這)
zhè ("this") and 那
nà ("that"); however, when a noun stands alone without any such qualifier, no classifier is needed. There are also various other uses of classifiers: for example, when placed after a noun rather than before it, or when repeated, a classifier signifies a plural or indefinite quantity.