"Can I have a gum, please?"
"I spread a butter on my toast."
"I need to buy three toothpastes."
"That pants is too tight."

LAWL. To a native English speaker, those sentences sound all kinds of wrong. And why are they wrong? Because we don't chew "a gum", we chew "a stick of gum". We don't spread "a butter", we spread "a pat of butter". We don't buy "three toothpastes", we buy "three tubes of toothpaste". And by the way, "that pair of pants" is too tight.

"Stick", "pat", "tube", "pair" ... these are measure words that exist in the English language - words that describe the shape or form of a thing. A "pat", for example, specifically refers to a thick square of some semi-solid material. A "stick" refers to something long and thin. A "tube" refers to something long, round and hollow. Measure words aren't randomly interchangable - you can't just pair any old measure word with any old object; you can't, for example, say "a tube of butter" or "a pair of toothpaste". I mean, you could. But there would be smirking. 

In English, we only sometimes use measure words - lots of objects can simply stand on their own: "a book", "an apple", "a chair". In Chinese, though, measure words are way more common. There are measure words for damn near everything: lamps, animals, books, chairs, . Worse, there's no real way to . You just have to memorize which measure words go with which objects. It's one of the more painful aspects of learning the language. 

<h3>The big ol' list of Simplified Chinese measure words</h3>

<table>
<tr>
<th>Measure Word</th>
<th>Pinyin</th>
<th>Usage</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>条</td>
<td>[pinyin]tiao2[/pinyin]</td>
<td>Long, thin, windy or wobbly things, like noodles, rivers, or trousers.</td>
</tr>
</table>

<h3>Dearest God in Himmel, let there be another way</h3>
Don't want to memorize all those measure words? The Almighty has heard you, worldly sufferer. There is another way, kind of. When you don't know the measure word for a specific object, you can usually substitute the generic, catch-all, fallback measure word 个 [pinyin]ge4[/pinyin]. Lots of Chinese language learners take one look at the measure word master list and decide they'll just stick with 个 forever. You wanna do that? Fine. You wouldn't be the first one. Wouldn't recommend it, though. Using 个 with everything makes you sound a little silly, like you dropped out of primary school. You'll never be fluent. So buckle down and memorize.