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This morning in Taipei I went to buy a coffee.

I knew how to say 我要一杯咖啡 and I knew the word for big is 大.

But I didn't know where in the sentence to put the 大. Does it go before 杯 to mean "big cup"? Or if 杯 is a classifier rather than a noun here, I guess it can't take an adjective. Unless it can actually function as both noun and classifier at once?

Or alternatively would it go before 咖啡? That sounds odd when I back-translate literally into English "I want one cup of big coffee". But you can never trust literal translations to be idiomatic anyway.

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  • @ChristopheStrobbe: Thanks for fixing my dumb mistake in the title! Aug 10, 2016 at 2:32

3 Answers 3

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I'm not a linguist, just a native speaker. My opinion is that 大 should go before 杯, i.e. 我要一大杯咖啡, since I have never heard anyone said 我要一杯大咖啡.

Words like 杯 are called 量词(sorry I don't know the exact term), and the adjectives about amount are always placed before 量词. For example, 一大碗饭= a bowl of a lot of rice, 一大把花= a bunch of many flowers.

Maybe this solution is not satisfying; sorry I can't explain it in detail. 量词 is actually quite sophisticated, and is often omitted when translated into English. I hope this article will help (well it's written in Chinese).

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  • Wow, I'm back in Taiwan and just asked my host and she said this way sounds childish or sounds like I want a gigantic cup. She gave me the same answer that Cristophe gives. Feb 1, 2019 at 12:19
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Personally I've used

我要一杯咖啡,大的。

我要一杯咖啡,大杯。

I don't know if it's the best way to say it, but I've never had any problem being understood this way...

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The adjective is always placed directly before the noun, so it is correct to phrase the sentence as: (我)(要)(一杯)(大)(咖啡 ) (I)(want)(a cup of )(large)(coffee)

  • (a cup of) is the quantity word and classifier,
  • 大 in 大咖啡 is short for "大杯 / 大碼" (large cup/ large size ), it is still functioning as an adjective, but the phrase 大杯咖啡 / 大碼咖啡 is treated as one item on the menu, so you can call it a noun.

Edit:

so, 一大杯咖啡 or 餃子一小份 is incorrect then?

It is not incorrect, the adjective is just modifying different objects in the phrases:

  1. 大杯咖啡 (one large cup of coffee); 一小份餃子 (one small order of dumplings)

  2. 一杯大咖啡 (one cup of large coffee); 一份小餃子 (one order of small dumpling(s))

  3. 大咖啡一杯 (large coffee, one cup); 小餃子一份 (small dumpling(s), one order)

  4. 咖啡一大杯 (coffee, one large cup); 餃子一小份 (dumplings, one small order)

小 in 小餃子 can be the adjective (small) that modify the noun 餃子(dumpling), meaning "the size of individual dumpling is small; it can also be shorthand for 小份, "小(份)餃子" = "small (order of) dumplings", meaning the number of dumplings is small.

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  • After I posted the question here I kept Googling and one site, I think English WIkipedia, said that when the number is 一 there is a special case and the adjective can actually come either before or after the classifier. Is that true? By the way words don't really have a "front" and many people would interpret "in front of" to mean "before", so it's clearer in English to write "before" or "after". Aug 7, 2016 at 4:56
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    I don't think there's any exception regarding the order of adjective and noun in Chinese grammar. But a classifier can be placed before or after a noun, for example -- 一杯大碼咖啡 (a cup of large coffee) = 大碼咖啡一杯(large coffee, one cup)
    – Tang Ho
    Aug 7, 2016 at 5:21
  • Wouldn't 大碼 be considered "adjective+noun" here or would it be an adjective phrase? Apologies for being such a newbie! Aug 7, 2016 at 5:25
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    大= large, 碼=size, it is an adjective phrase for " large-sized"
    – Tang Ho
    Aug 7, 2016 at 5:30
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    So, is 一大杯咖啡 or 餃子一小份 incorrect?!@TangHo I keep hearing these every day!
    – Ludi
    Aug 7, 2016 at 11:23

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