Noun Suffix 子 zi

The character 子 zi literally means offspring or child, but it is also used as a noun suffix. You can often find it in lot of nouns, like 兔子 (tùzi, rabbit),  帽子(màozi, hat), and 盒子 (hézi, box), which end with this neutral toned “zi 子”. Today we are going to talk more about this grammar point to see why we need this 子zi as a noun ending.

Each character in Chinese is a unit of meaning and a character can be used in a variety of different words as well. However, Chinese is not a monosyllabic language. Most words in the modern Chinese are actually multisyllabic, which are made up of more than one character, usually two, but there can be three or more. So, most English words could be translated into a Chinese bigram of two Chinese characters.  Hence, that's why we put 子 zi ending after one-syllable nouns in Chinese, even though it does not have any significant meanings in these nouns. You can regard it as "stuff". 

Let take a look at these examples again:

• 兔(tù,rabbit)  --> 兔子 (tùzi, rabbit) 
  
• 帽(mào, hat) --> 帽子(màozi, hat)
• 盒 (hé, box) --> 盒子 (hézi, box)

We put zi 子 after the monosyllabic nouns. However, we do not put zi 子 after a noun which is a bigram . For example, 

• 白兔 (bái tù) = white rabbit 
• (Note that the noun-making suffix “zi” drops off.)
• 红帽 (hóng mào) = red hat 
• 木盒 (mù hé) = wooden box

Please translate the following sentences. 

1. 这双_______很好看。This pair of shoes looks nice. (shoe 鞋)
2. 这双_______很好看。This pair of black shoes looks nice. 
3. 山上有一只________。There is a monkey on the mountain. (monkey, 猴)

      4. 他小的时候是一个小________。When he was young, he was a little chubby boy. 

      5. 我今天中午吃了20个________, 他吃了10个________。I had 20 dumplings at noon, and he had 10 steam buns. 

Do you like these fruits with "子 zi "?

Reference:
http://fluentinmandarin.com/content/ten-things-you-need-to-about-chinese-characters/
http://www.101languages.net/chinese/morphology.html