Can 们 be added to anything to make it plural?

[Friday]

Can 们 be added after any noun to make that plural? I do not think I ever heard this being done, as usually I see something like 多 or a number and measure word in front, but that assumes I want to be specific about the number.

 

He feeds his horses.

 

他喂他的马们。

 

If not, is there another way to express an ambiguous amount?

[lips]

他喂他的马。

[Hofmann]

Not anything, only people. That would include pronouns and titles like 老師 and 孫子. For other things like 馬, it will have to be ambiguous unless you say something like 幾隻.

[xiaokaka]

For horses, shouldn't that be 几匹 instead of 几只?

[Hofmann]

Oh. Right. Yes.

[wibr]

它們 is the "thing" equivalent for 他們 (people), 牠們 (animals)

[hoshinoumi]

Also, remember that these sentences should not be looked at alone, they are always part of something else. Perhaps in this one you don't have to specify that it's "horses" because, after that, you will be writing about a specific horse (and thus, telling there are more than one), or giving their names.

[Leah. X.]

“们” is usually NOT added to non-human nouns.

“马们”, "铅笔们", etc, are quite odd from native speakers' perspective.

[RKNChinese]

Yes, 们 is only for people (with the exception of 它们), and even then, for example, 朋友 can be "friend" or "friends", but 朋友们 is used to really emphasise it's more than one. One way to get around that in a lot of cases could be 一些, but in your case it wouldn't work. As mentioned above, there will usually be a context later/earlier on which gives you the answer. If 他喂他的马 is not good enough in the overall context, I guess you could use 所有 (suoyou, both third tone), meaning "all". Then it would be 他喂所有他的马 (所有 usually has a 的 after it but since there is more than one of them and it's not the last one, it doesn't, though you probably knew that), "He feeds all his horses", and while that's not ideal, you can at least tell it's plural.

[BanZhiYun]

们 is a little bit tricky. Most of the times, you can add it after people. 我的朋友／同学们好 etc. But, if there is a number or an indication of quantity of any sort modifying these nouns, you cannot add 们. E.g.: 我的几个朋友们 is wrong. You can either say 我的几个朋友 or 我的朋友们.  To be honest, I think what's more tricky in Chinese is the words that are plural by origin, for example : 人类，书籍(books). You can not add a measure word when using  these words, for example, you cannot say 我一年能读得好几本书籍. Hope this helped~