I guess the measure word works equivalently to a unit of measurement, then. One bottle of beer, one sack of sugar, one 条 of pant.
Re:The Eternal Sloptember
by thaumasiotes on Monday May 25, 2026 @05:45AM
(#48265071)
Correct. In Chinese all nouns require them.
(It's not the case, however, that all measure words require nouns. 天 ("day") and 年 ("year") are measure words that are almost always used on their own. There might be an implicit notion of "one day of time" or similar.)
You could translate it as "a pair of pants", and that's the appropriate way to put it in English, but really it says "one pants".