条 is a measure word for things that are long (rivers / snakes / pants), but it's... | Hacker News

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		thaumasiotes on Sept 25, 2017 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Paying top employees the highest salaries in the m... 条 is a measure word for things that are long (rivers / snakes / pants), but it's not the word for line. The character most closely related to the concept is 线 xian, and 线 is indeed the word for "line" in many senses. In other senses, you find words of more than one syllable.

nickrio on Sept 26, 2017 [–]

Yes, it's not very accurate in term of word-by-word translation. Maybe it's for suiting the context and habits.

A strip (条) of news is works better than A line (线) of news in Chinese.

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