Comments on: Why does Chinese have more collective nouns than English? https://www.digmandarin.com/why-does-chinese-have-more-collective-nouns-than-english.html Tue, 30 Apr 2024 02:18:54 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.7.2 By: nomen nescio https://www.digmandarin.com/why-does-chinese-have-more-collective-nouns-than-english.html#comment-33360 Tue, 30 Apr 2024 02:18:54 +0000 http://www.digmandarin.com/?p=6818#comment-33360 That’s not what collective noun means. In English a collecitve noun is one that expresses a plural meaning without a plural form. Coffee. Tea. Fish. Meat. These are all collective nouns.

What you are talking about is lexical space. It doesn’t have any deep meaning. Of course it is going to be very different between two language that didn’t have much contact until maybe the 18th or 19th century and which don’t have areal contact at all.

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