I am learning very basic Chinese as part of a software project. I randomly chose the word "tree" as my go-to noun. However, it appears tree is pluralized in Chinese, even though it is said Chinese doesn't use plurals.
树木 (shùmù) trees
树 (shù) tree
It seems that 木 mù means wood. I don't understand what is happening here.
I thought that if I were to pluralize tree, I would say some equivalent of "many tree" or "tree many" or something, but I don't see that when searching around.
What am I missing?
I am trying to translate these sentences:
- I see trees
- I see the trees
- I see the big red trees
- I see many trees
- I see both trees
- I ... trees
But it doesn't seem to be following the pattern in intro Chinese grammar texts.
How should I be thinking about this?