Indefinite article vs numeral: use of "一" (yī)?

Question

Sometimes, when the English has an indefinite article ("a", "an"), the Chinese translation has a numeral ("一", yī). So, for example, "I want to buy **a** ticket" sounds like "I want to buy **one** ticket". Sometimes the article in Chinese is just dropped. So, is there a distinction between a singular indefinite article and a unity numeral? Is there a way to distinguish between a "vague" quantity (e.g.: "I want **an** ice cream", meaning that "I feel like having something fresh to heat") and an exact quantity (e.g.: "I want **one** ice cream", in the sense that "I want one and exactly one ice cream")? When the article and/or the numeral should be omitted? Thanks!

Answer 1

So in Chinese, sometimes they use "一" (yī) like "a" or "an", but not always. Like, "I want a ticket" becomes "I want one ticket" in Chinese. But it doesn’t always mean exact one. Sometimes they just drop "一" too. If you really mean "one", like only one, you can make it clear by tone or more context. But if you just mean like "some ice cream", like not exact, it can be vague. So yeah, depends on feeling and situation I guess.

Answer 2

for the ice-cream one, you can just say "I want (null) ice-cream or I want (some) ice-cream" although ice-cream is uncountable noun.

Chinese: 我想吃冰淇淋；/wo xiang chi bing qi lin/

Chinese: 我想吃点儿冰淇淋；/wo xiang chi dian'er bing qi lin/

It is much like article "the" is being omitted. Or some/little/few of the ice-cream.

Actually verb. /Xiang/ can also mean "need" to have. If you really need one, more oral way to say, is to omit /YI/, but leave the unit /GE/ (which is piece)

Chinese: 我想吃个冰淇淋 == 我想吃（一）个冰淇淋，when you don't want to emphasize exact one piece of ice-cream you want.