What does 门 mean in these two sentences?
这个学期一共上四门课吗？
一共上五门，还有体育。可是体育没什么功课。
It is a quantifier. In Chinese, when counting something, you have to insert a quantifier like this between the number and the noun. This one “门” is for counting courses or subjects in school. With different things, you have to remember to use different quantifiers; in other words, you cannot use the same one for counting books, fruit, furniture, etc. You will gradually learn all of them.
I can’t believe I didn’t catch that!
Thanks.
I am not a native speaker but I will try to answer it. Sorry for my bad English.
In English, we use something like quantifier such as “cup”, “piece”, etc to count non-countable noun.
For example
a cup of coffee = 一 杯 咖啡
a glace of water =一 杯 水
a piece of cake = 一 个 蛋糕
but in Chinese we use it to count every noun.
For example
a cat = 一 只 猫
a restaurant = 一 家 饭馆
So 四门课 is “four courses”
a course = 一 门 课
two courses = 两 门 课
three courses = 三 门 课
four courses = 四 门 课
There is a certain reason.
In Chinese there is neither a plural form “…s” nor an article for noun. When we speak of books or of a book, in Chinese we only can say “book”.
I think that it is necessary to have something to express a certain complexity. To emphasize the number of a noun, we use a quantifier. That’s why a quantifier of Chinese exists.
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And what does 上 means in that text? I know it is “up”. But I can’t understand that sentence.
上课
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You may think of it as “take up”.
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上课 (shàngkè) attend class & 下课 (xiàkè) finish class, are quite interesting in light of TroisRoyaumes’ “take up”/“take down”
一块蛋糕… 