Methodology

The "most natural" answer

The first answer is the everyday default in contemporary standard Mandarin. We pick it when all of the following hold:

• It is common in modern spoken and written Mandarin.
• It does not require a special container, quantity, or unit to make sense.
• It does not require formal, literary, or regional context.
• It is the most transferable choice for a learner.

If no classifier meets all four, the page shifts to Common ways to count it instead of forcing a single primary answer.

Alternatives and contexts

Every alternative must answer one question: what changes when this classifier is used? Valid differences include:

• Container, serving, or unit.
• Physical form, shape, or grouping.
• Kind or variety of thing.
• Work or piece (a song, a film, an article).
• Time span or event.
• Register: formal, literary, regional, or marked.

If an alternative cannot be justified by one of these differences, it is not surfaced.

Multi-meaning words

Words like paper, bat, and glass are split into senses before the user sees a result. The user picks the meaning they meant, and only then sees the classifier relations for that sense.

Review

Each Published entry is checked by a Mandarin-speaking reviewer before it ships. Each entry records when it was reviewed and what kind of source the reviewer used.

This page is the rule, but the current data set is mid-revision. Several entries that already appeared as Published have been moved to Draft while we re-audit them. Until re-audit is complete, treat every answer as draft, not as a final reviewed verdict.

What is currently in scope

• A short, hand-reviewed list of common nouns. Fewer entries, each trustworthy.
• One primary answer per sense, plus up to three alternatives.
• Pinyin and Simplified/Traditional Chinese on every result.
• Sense disambiguation for paper, glass, bat, and similar ambiguous English words.

What is currently out of scope

• Live AI-generated answers.
• Auto-generated pages from raw dictionary data.
• User accounts, comments, or community editing.
• Sponsored results.
• Public search indexing. The site is noindex for now.