Basic numbers: Paying the grocery bill

🇨🇳 In restaurants you call out 结账 (jié zhàng) or 买单 (mǎi dān) "check, please" to the server. At a supermarket you just bring your items to the counter.

💬 Adding 吗 (ma) to the end of a statement turns it into a yes-or-no question. The word order stays the same. Answer by repeating the verb: 要 (yào) "yes" or 不要 (bú yào) "no".

🇨🇳 Plastic bags aren't free in Chinese shops, so cashiers ask whether you want one. Many locals bring their own.

💬 一 is read (yí) before 个 (gè), so you say (yào yí gè). For two you say 两个 (liǎng gè), not 二个: 要两个 "I want two".

💬 Put a thing in front to ask about it: 这个多少钱？ "How much is this?". 钱 (qián) means money, so the phrase is literally "how much money".

💬 毛 (máo) is the spoken word for a tenth of a yuan, so 三毛 means 0.3 yuan. Prices you see written as 角 (jiǎo) are said as 毛 out loud.

💬 No verb is needed to link a thing and its price. You can just say the item and then the amount: 苹果五块 "apples are five yuan".

💬 块 (kuài) is the everyday word for yuan. A number after 块 means tenths, so 五 here means 50 cents, not 5. In speech you can drop the final 毛: 三块五 is 3.50.