Example sentences
gěi给wǒ我liǎng两gè个。
Give me two.
wǒ我men们liǎng两gè个rén人qù去。
The two of us go.
The story behind the character
两
兩, the older form, shows two things split evenly down the middle. Xu Shen defined it as a weight: 二十四銖為一兩, twenty-four zhu make one liang. So the character began life on a scale, as a unit of measure. The sense of "two" grew out of that even division. When you say 两个人, you are using a weighing word that turned into a counting word.
Related words
Practise the numbers with audio →Every number from 1 to 100, each digit tap-to-hear, plus the tone changes that trip people up.