Shanghainese classifiers and measure words

Every Chinese language counts with a classifier, and Shanghainese has a set of its own: some shared with Mandarin, some that Mandarin lost, and one — 个 — that does five jobs where the Mandarin word does one.

Updated 4 October 2026 · 3 min read

Tap 🔊 to hear an example. Shanghainese examples play the recordings from Verbavia’s course, made with a Shanghainese voice; Mandarin examples play a Mandarin voice.

What a classifier is, in thirty seconds

You cannot say two books in Shanghainese. You say two-volume-book: 两本书 lian pen syu ‘two books’. The word in the middle is the classifier, chosen by the shape or kind of the thing counted, and it is compulsory after a number and after a demonstrative. The idea will be familiar from Mandarin; the words are not all the same, and the readings never are.

The everyday set

只 tsah ‘(classifier)’ is the one to notice. In Mandarin it is the classifier for animals and one of a pair; in Shanghainese it is close to a general classifier for things, and Wiktionary records it used “dialectally/humorously” for people. A Mandarin speaker who says 个 for everything will be understood, and will sound like one.

The ones Mandarin does not have

Three classifiers do jobs that Mandarin gives to other words, and each is a small badge of the language:

• 爿 bae ‘(classifier for shops)’ counts shops, restaurants and factories: 一爿店 ih bae tie ‘a shop’, 一爿饭店 ih bae vae tie ‘a restaurant’. Wiktionary gives it for “shops, factories, fields” and, in its older sense, split firewood.
• 桩 tsaon ‘(classifier for matters)’ counts matters and affairs, where Mandarin says 件: 一桩事体 ih tsaon zy thi ‘one matter’, 搿桩事体 geh tsaon zy thi ‘this matter’ — Wiktionary’s own Wu example.
• 眼 ngae ‘a bit; eye’ means a little: 一眼 ih ngae ‘a little’, 一眼眼 ih ngae ngae ‘a tiny bit’. Wiktionary labels the sense Northern Wu; Mandarin uses 点 here.
• 记 ci ‘(a blow)’ counts blows and hits — Wiktionary’s Wu example is 打伊一记, “hit him once” — where Mandarin reaches for 下.

个: five jobs for one syllable

个 gheh ‘(classifier; ’s)’ is the general classifier, as in Mandarin — but that is the least of what it does. Its pronunciation is already a clue that something has happened to it: Wikipedia describes gheq as “a glottalised lenition of the expected pronunciation, ku”, and the course reads it that way in every job, counting included — 一个 ih gheh ‘one (of something)’ — and keeps the full ku for bookish words such as 个人. The linguist Qian Nairong, writing in Xinmin Evening News, lists five functions. Beside counting, 个 is:

1. the possessive, doing Mandarin 的’s job: 我个书 ngu gheh syu ‘my book’, 侬个铜钿 non gheh don die ‘your money’;
2. the attributive link between a describing phrase and its noun — Qian’s example is 王小姐个学问, “Miss Wang’s learning”;
3. a nominaliser, turning an adjective into a thing: 红个, “the red one”;
4. a marker of definiteness in front of a noun, “equivalent to English the”;
5. a sentence-final particle asserting that something did happen.

That last pair is why Shanghainese can say what looks like a bare classifier and a noun and mean the book. Linguists working on Wu and Cantonese — Cheng and Sybesma, and Li and Bisang — have described classifier-plus-noun without a number as a definite in these languages, a reading Mandarin does not allow. The course does not drill this, but you will hear it.

This and that

A demonstrative takes a classifier too, and the demonstratives are their own words: 搿 geh ‘this’ and 埃 e ‘that’, never Mandarin’s 这 and 那.

• 搿个 geh gheh ‘this one’
• 搿本书 geh pen syu ‘this book’
• 埃只猫 e tsah 'mau ‘that cat’

Every: double the classifier

Reduplicating a classifier means every — Wikipedia’s example is 本本, “every book”. 只只 tsah tsah ‘every one’, 本本 pen pen ‘every book’, 趟趟 thaon thaon ‘every time’. It is a pattern Mandarin shares, and it works with the Shanghainese-only classifiers as readily as the common ones.

Where to go next

Numbers to put in front of these are on the numbers page; the pronouns that 个 attaches to are on the pronouns page; and the sentence around all of it is on the grammar page.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Shanghainese — Pronouns (个 gheq as possessive suffix, “a glottalised lenition of the expected pronunciation, ku”) and Classifiers (reduplication 本本 = every book)
2. Qian Nairong (钱乃荣), 上海话中“个”的语法功能, Xinmin Evening News, 9 July 2023 — the five functions of 个
3. Wiktionary: 隻 — classifier for animals, things, and “dialectally/humorously” for people
4. Wiktionary: 爿 — classifier for shops, factories, fields
5. Wiktionary: 樁 — classifier for matters; Wu example 搿樁事體
6. Wiktionary: 眼 — Northern Wu “some; a bit”
7. Wiktionary: 記 — classifier for blows; Wu example 打伊一記
8. Li, X. and Bisang, W. (2012). Classifiers in Sinitic languages: from individuation to definiteness-marking. Lingua 122(4)