In Mandarin,there is so many measure word,ex."个","把","串","只","朵",“枚”,“斤”,“杯”,etc....i think there is a huge amount of them. I learn it when i was a child and i think it's easy to know how use.just like English of yours. I think there is no shortcuts to get it,just more practice,just make it surround you,the Mandarin environment and you can use it directly,from your own heart,not through the brain. hope helps.

You'd better learn these words with the objective word together. Maybe 30 words are enough to know the syntax. Then you can find a way, because they are similar with each other.

http://xh.5156edu.com/page/z7949m2560j18586.html In most cases, if you fail to figure out which measure word to use, you can use 个 instead. Though this may be considered bad Chinese, it makes sense most of the time.