And then there's ridiculous ones, like "a murder of crows", that many people know because they're ridiculous, but people still don't use them.
And then there's a ton that almost nobody knows, and nobody uses.
In the end, it's not a big deal. Unlikely Japanese, where they really do use counters for those kinds of object. Flat things like paper, cylindrical things like beer bottles, etc etc.
Not going to defend the consistency of English for a second but for that particular example: paper isn’t sliced, so it wouldn’t make sense to refer to “a slice of paper”.
Obviously the standard usage of a “piece of paper” is pretty arbitrary, but slice is clearly wrong.
On the other hand, all 3 of those can be used with "piece of". Slice describes something that was done to it, and sheet describes its form. (As opposed to scrap or some such term.)
I don't see how that's inconsistent. Slice is used to describe things that are cut from a larger whole, particularly for food, while paper is manufactured as sheets.
English uses those also to some degree: a case of beer, a carton of eggs.
But, yeah, if you told me to pick up some eggs and a a carton/box of beer, I'd know what you probably wanted. (In the latter case, I might ask if you wanted a 6-pack, 12-pack, or 24.)
And then there's ridiculous ones, like "a murder of crows", that many people know because they're ridiculous, but people still don't use them.
And then there's a ton that almost nobody knows, and nobody uses.
In the end, it's not a big deal. Unlikely Japanese, where they really do use counters for those kinds of object. Flat things like paper, cylindrical things like beer bottles, etc etc.
https://www.audubon.org/news/no-its-not-actually-murder-crow...