At the market
The vendor holds up a rock-hard tomato and swears it's fresh. You have three seconds to buy three things before Hilal grabs the good bananas and vanishes forever.
Save the bananasThe words — At the market
Market day. Hilal is here, he's weird about fruit, and everything is about to get very specific.
Meaningapple
힐랄이 사과 하나를 들고 이거는 토마토라고 말해요.
Hilal is holding one apple and saying this is a tomato.
Meaningbanana
힐랄이 바나나 하나로 사과를 가리켜요.
Hilal is pointing at the apple with a banana.
Meaningtomato
힐랄이 토마토가 신선해요라고 세 번 말해요. 그건 사과예요.
Hilal says three times that the tomato is fresh. It is an apple.
Meaningit's fresh
지자가 힐랄에게 사과, 바나나, 토마토 이름을 다시 알려줘요. 힐랄은 그냥 신선해요라고만 말해요.
Zeeza tells Hilal the names of apple, banana, and tomato again. Hilal just says "it's fresh."
Meaningone kilo
누줌이 토마토 일 킬로 주세요라고 말해요.
Nujoom says: one kilo of tomatoes, please.
Watch out — At the market
You point at the apples and say the phrase. The seller doesn't blink. What did you just order?
사과 세 개 주세요사과 세 개 주세요 = 'three apples, please'. When you count objects one by one, Korean switches to native numbers (하나, 둘, 셋 → 세 개) — that switch is the whole trick of this lesson.
The scene — At the market
Sama is minding the stall today, and Nujoom has picked up every fruit on it except the one they came for. The scale is already spinning. Zeeza has one job: buy three things and leave before Nujoom adopts a tomato.
- 이거 보세요! 바나나예요! 토마토도 있어요!Look at this! It's a banana! There's a tomato too!
- 사과요.Apples.
- 사과 세 개 주세요.Three apples, please.
- 바나나도 주세요.Bananas too, please.
The idea — At the market
이거 얼마예요? means 'how much is this?' — the one phrase that gets you out of any market alive.
Next time you're holding a tomato and panicking, you now have exactly the words to point at it and ask.
Questions about At the market
How do you say 'how much is this?' in Korean?
You say 이거 얼마예요? (igeo eolmayeyo?), which means 'how much is this?' — a key phrase for shopping at a market.
How do you say 'three apples, please' in Korean?
You say 사과 세 개 주세요 (sagwa se gae juseyo), meaning 'three apples, please', using the native Korean number 세 for counting objects.
How do you ask for one kilo of something in Korean?
You say 토마토 일 킬로 주세요 (tomato il killo juseyo), meaning 'one kilo of tomatoes, please'.
When do Koreans switch to native numbers instead of Sino-Korean numbers?
When counting objects one by one (like fruit), Korean uses native numbers such as 하나, 둘, 셋, which become 세 개 for 'three items'.
You've seen the idea. Now make it stick.
The journey continues in Zeeza — free to start, made to adapt to how you learn.
- Hear it and choose
- Fill the idea in from memory
- Say it after the voice
- …and more, adapted to you