Classifiers 0: Overview (WIP)

The What

The use of classifiers/measure is one of the most striking features of Fou Tong, clearly inspired by the languages of China. The development of classifiers in a Germanic language as phonetically reduced as Fou Tong should not come as a surprise, though: Classical Chinese knew neither tones nor classifiers, they have largely developed later in the Medieval period.

Like in Chinese languages, Fou Tong employs Classifiers for a variety of functions, each of which is discussed in a dedicated article:

as Measure Words: Count Classifiers (upcoming)
as Measure Words: Mass Classifiers (upcoming)
as Plurality Markers (upcoming)
as Relative Pronouns (upcoming)
as Possession Markers (upcoming)

The How

Initially, I was trying to come up with the classifiers myself, but soon realized that they were too... European, I guess. No amount of substances would ever make come up with "three strings of dog" or "one brush of a deal". So while I did introduce a few classifiers of my own (like "tent" for operas and swimming pools and "lance" for junior office workers), I mostly copy Chinese homework, while often giving the words with default classifier 個/个 "thing" in Chinese more "meaningful" ones.

The List

The list of classifiers you find below will never be complete. I am not really sure how many classifiers I already have, and there sure is local variations of their usage. As of now (September 2026) I will be slowly pulling the existing ones from my offline dictionary.

In addition, I include the Proto-Germanic source of the word and a Hanzi. Note that those Hanzi symbols are mostly purely illustrative - while Fou Tong is ideographic and uses the same Hanzi keys as Chinese, those ideograms should be created from those keys basing on the first principles. But since I ended up using the usual Hanzi as tags in the dictionary, and so I put them here with the link to Wiktionary page for reference.

bai "both": paired objects: eyes, ears, shoes, gloves, spouses, sides of the road etc.
*bai; 雙

huò "hillock": elevated places, walled enclosures; interest circles and societies; matters and affairs
*hufą; 壇

man "person": general classifier for human beings;
*mann- ; 人

mao "bag": elastic containers: bag, sack, purse; baggy organs: lung, stomach
*malhō; 袋

pǎ "flat": big flat objects: fields, floors; activities on large flat surfaces: scene, concert, sport activity, battle, war; somehow also: rain, dream
*flatją, 場

ré "rise": occasion, emergency, upheaval, hustle, theft, legal case
raisō cf. *rīsaną; 起

rǐ "tributary": school of thought, intellectual, religious or political movement, sect or camp; scene, atmosphere, public speech
*rīþaz, 派