[viceroyalbean]

I don't know about Mandarin, but Korean counting words are very different from English collective nouns.

English: one animal, one person, one book

Korean: han mari, han myeong, han gweon.

Where 'han' is one, and the other three words are the counting words specific for counting animals, people, and books respectively.

[inkyoto]

Collective nouns, a common feature of Indo-European languages, are not an exact equivalent of counting words in Korean, Japanese, Chinese and other Southeast Asian languages, they are their nearest functional equivalent though.

It is not unfathomable (in fact, it is rather common) to conjure up the following conversation:

- How much milk (bread) do I have to buy?

- Two packets (two loaves), please.

In this context, packets and loaves fulfill the same role as the Korean counting words although they are multifunctional words, indeed.