I recently made the mistake of equating classifiers with collective nouns cos was told that western languages for example english doesn't have them while eastern ones like thai have them.

For example say bottles are classified as kuat in thai. I was thinking well doesn't english have something like that too. Say a collection of bottles. A herd of cattle etc.

Found out for english those are collective nouns not classifiers. What is the difference though?

ok i understand it now.

Does the English language actually lack classifiers? Or is it just that the classifier for pretty much everything is the same?

But there are exceptions, for example you can say that you bought one item of clothing but not one item of shoes.

Edited October 27, 201510 yr by WorkingTourist

To me, the english equivalent would be...

a sheet of paper

a bale of hay

a ball of yarn

two bottles of water

three glasses of wine etc

The difference is that we can omit them, knowing that the person to whom we are speaking is smart enough to understand anyway. When I am speaking in English or French, I do not have to state that "I have younger brothers two people".

"For example say bottles are classified as kuat in thai "

the numerical classifier for " kuat " is " bai " ( hollow object, recipient ) ไบ ( also classifier for " eggs " , which have an other classifier " fong " ฟอง )

I remember on this forum, two years ago, when I told somebody that when speaking of human beings we must use the classifer " kon ", he answered that classifiers are for people who speak academic or university language and that his friends in the street never use classifiers

I think his friends where not Thai, because every Thai, even the less educated ones use classifiers all the times

I thought that I could answer this question but I can't, I am used to just saying things the Thai way. There are Thai words for describing things which come in various forms; rolls/lengths/balls of of yarn, groups of things; herds/gaggle/bundles etc. you learn them. ลักษณนาม are the equivalent of making a noun plural: "two house" is not good neither is สองบ้าน .

The difference is that we can omit them, knowing that the person to whom we are speaking is smart enough to understand anyway. When I am speaking in English or French, I do not have to state that "I have younger brothers two people".

No. The example above is simply ungrammatical. In English you can not omit the number for count nouns nor the classifier for mass (collective) nouns.

And I know no Thais who omit classifiers. Many Thais will use some of the more generic classifiers such as ?an (อัน) for something that might have what some might consider a more formal or precise classifier. Another common example is to classify an elephant with tua (ตัว) rather than the more formal chuak (เชือก).

To state my point another way. in English or French,I don't need to add the word "people". It goes without saying that my brothers are people.

You might be forgiven for thinking that Thai was created in order to reflect French or English because those were used to teach you but Thai is in fact a different language altogether.