Hi folks, could someone help me with some measure words.

The course I'm using at the moment in conjunction with CPod is teaching the word egg as: yi2 ge ji1 dan4 but my Chinese friend says the measure word he was taught at school was yi2 li4 ji1 dan4.

Likewise, he says that yi2 ge ping2 guo3 should be yi2 li4 ping2 guo3.

I'm really confused, can someone please help.

wouldn't it be terrific if the pdfs contained measure words to the listed nouns..?? if chinesepod is about spoken mandarin, then there is no way around the damn measure words! sure, users may not be able to absorb them right away (or even know about them), but listing MW in parentheses after the noun would allow users to go back later and learn it... PLEASE?

if not feasible, can you direct us to a good online resource (not general dictionary) where MW can be looked up quickly?

but i really hope this could be implemented.. am sure i'm not alone.

We all love to hate 'em. Here's my new strategy for learning measure words:

1: Whenever I add a new noun to my vocabulary list, I look it up on nciku. Usually, there are measure word colloquations there. Hopefully, there's just one.

2: If it's a measure word I haven't already studied, I add it to the vocab.

3: Since the pinyin field in the vocab list is editable (thank you, ChinesePod!), I add the measure word there. This is because in StudyArcade, which is the iPhone app I use to study vocabulary, both directions (C->E and E->C) have the pinyin on the answer side.

This is based on the classic approach of learning gender in gender based languages. You don't learn "'voiture' means 'car'", you learn "'la voiture' means 'the car'", since this gives you the gender for free. The same way, when learning Chinese, don't learn "'zhǐ' means 'paper'", learn "'yī zhāng zhǐ' means 'a piece of paper'".

Problems with this approach:

1: The Chinese field of the vocab is not editable, which makes it impossible to do it the way I want to do it (adding the character of the measure word in the Chinese field and the pinyin in the pinyin field). Also, no "Convert to tone marks" button is availible in the pinyin editing field, but that's easily worked around.

2: Sometimes there are multiple measure word colloquations.

So what I'm looking for in this discussion is both your own ways of learning the measure words, and if you have a solution to any of my problems (like, what should I do when there are several measure words for a noun?). I'll be interested in reading your thoughts.

In cases where there are many acceptable measure words, one of which is 个, does it sound formal to use another measure word in daily speech?

Take for example the word 村庄, cūnzhuāng, "village". According to nciku, there are three acceptable measure words: 处 chù, 个 gè and 座 zuò. I find the 个 pretty bland and unevocative. I'd much rather use for example 处. But I know that 个 is used a lot more in colloquial speech than in formal and written sentences. Does this mean that if I say 一处村庄, I will sound formal?

Are there general rules here, or does it vary depending on the word?