What you will be able to do
- Ask for a price, a size and a reduction, and understand the answer.
- Use 件, 条, 双 and 本 with the things a shop actually sells.
- Drop the noun after 的 and answer with 大的, 便宜的, 红的.
- Tell 给 from 找 in a transaction: one hands over, the other gives change.
Chinese words in this text can be activated to show a dictionary gloss.
In a shop
Four sentences that do most of the work
- 。 Wǒ kànkan. — Just looking. Doubling a verb makes it brief and casual, and it is the polite way to decline help without refusing it.
- ？ Zhège duōshao qián?
- ？ Yǒu méiyǒu dà hào de? — Do you have it in large? xiǎo hào is small, zhōng hào medium.
- 。 Tài guì le. — Too expensive. … is a complete sentence on its own.
The measure words a shop forces on you
- jiàn — upper-body clothing and abstract items: yí jiàn yīfu, yí jiàn chènshān.
- tiáo — long, flexible things: yì tiáo kùzi, yì tiáo qúnzi.
- shuāng — pairs: yì shuāng xié, yì shuāng wàzi.
- běn — books: liǎng běn shū.
will be understood in almost all of these, and it will also be heard. Learn each item with its own measure word from the start; retrofitting them later is much harder.
standing on its own
This is the piece of grammar a shop teaches best. links a description to a noun — piányi de yīfu, cheap clothes. Once everyone can see what is being talked about, the noun drops out and stays behind holding the description:
- 。 Wǒ yào piányi de. — I want the cheap one.
- ？ Yǒu dà de ma? — Do you have a big one?
- 。 Zhège shì wǒ de. — This one is mine.
The English one has no equivalent in Mandarin; is what does that job.
Talking the price down
- ，。 Tài guì le, piányi yìdiǎnr ba. — softens it into a suggestion rather than a demand.
- ？ Néng bu néng piányi yìdiǎnr?
- ，？ Wǔshí kuài, xíng bu xíng? — Fifty, all right?
- ？ Yígòng duōshao qián?
Bargaining belongs to markets and small stalls. In a shop with printed prices it is out of place, and the answer will be a polite no.
and
Both turn up at the moment of paying, and they are not the same word doing two jobs.
- gěi — to give, to hand over: 。 Gěi nǐ. — Here you are. 。 Wǒ gěi nǐ yìbǎi kuài.
- zhǎo — here, to give change: 。 Zhǎo nǐ èrshí kuài. — Twenty back. The same elsewhere means to look for, and the two senses live in one character.
Paying with a phone
Most counters expect a QR code rather than cash. sǎomǎ is to scan the code, and ？ Kěyǐ yòng shǒujī fù ma? is the question that settles it in advance. Cash is accepted everywhere by law, but a small stall may genuinely have no change for a large note, so keep small ones.
How to work through it
What a shop asks of youread
Read the lesson through, then close it and list the four sentences from memory. If you can produce 这个多少钱, 有没有大号的, 太贵了 and 一共多少钱 without help, the rest of the lesson is detail.
Prices, sizes, garmentsvocabulary
贵 and 便宜 are an opposite pair and should be learned as one card with two sides. 件 and 双 are useless in isolation — attach each to a garment the moment you meet it.
Drop the noun, keep the 的sentence
Say each pair, full then short: 我要便宜的衣服 → 我要便宜的; 有大号的衣服吗 → 有大的吗; 这是我的书 → 这是我的. The short form is not lazy; it is what a shop assistant expects to hear.
The 的 that stands alone, and 太…了quiz
Ten items. Six shorten a full noun phrase to a 的 phrase; four choose between 很贵, 太贵了 and a bare 贵, which are three different degrees of the same complaint.
Buy one thing, then change your mindspeaking
Two rounds. In the first, buy a shirt: ask the price, ask for a larger size, buy it, count the change. In the second, decide it is too expensive and leave politely with 我再看看，谢谢 — walking away is part of the vocabulary.