Rosetta Stone sentence - what does it mean?

[iTunes]

Okay, I'm new here and I can't, for the life of me, find a decent place to have this question answered outside of a classroom, so hopefully you guys can help me. I'm using Rosetta Stone Mandarin, and they don't explain what the particles mean.

Example: Zhe ge nu hai zi zai chi fan.

I'm assuming that says: The little girl is eating.

I know, or at least am assuming, that:

-Zhe means This/That.

-Ge is a particle used to indicate a number of something, but I don't get why it's needed here.

-Nu hai zi is little girl.

-Zai is Location? I dont know.

-Chi fan means eating?

If this isn't the right place for this, please let me know and I'll repost it elsewhere unless it's moved for me. Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

[zhxlier]

You can treat "Zhege" as a whole word meaning "this". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_classifier for references on "ge".)

Zai implies progressive tense. ( "is eating" instead of "eats".)

Chi means "to eat".

Fan means "meal" (at least in the context of this sentence).

-Zhe means This/That.

-Ge is a particle used to indicate a number of something, but I don't get why it's needed here.

-Nu hai zi is little girl.

-Zai is Location? I dont know.

-Chi fan means eating?

[jbradfor]

-Ge is a particle used to indicate a number of something, but I don't get why it's needed here.

'cause Chinese grammar says you do

Basically "Whenever a noun is preceded by a number or a demonstrative, a classifier must come in between." [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_classifier for more details.] "Ge" is the most common classifier (also called a measure word) in Chinese, but by far not the only one.

EDIT: Opps, I see zhxlier beat me to that link. Oh well.

[iTunes]

Thanks for the info, guys. I really appreciate it!

[chrix]

you could also think of it as zhe-yi-ge, which gets fused to zhei-ge, (same for na-yi-ge : nei-ge)